Veering off topic, but this letter is in a variable width font. Were there typewriters that could do that? Was this so widely distributed that it was typeset on a printing press? The letterhead and body text aren’t aligned, so if it did go through a press it took two passes. The signature is also in ink, so that’s either a third pass for color, or an actual signature, and the letter doesn’t have the notation to indicate that it was signed by the secretary, so that leads me to think that it wasn’t widely distributed.
Does anybody have any other insights?
> Veering off topic, but this letter is in a variable width font. Were there typewriters that could do that?
Yes, and in fact one of the most popular was from IBM itself [1], released in 1944.
> The letterhead and body text aren’t aligned, so if it did go through a press it took two passes.
It was pretty standard practice to have pre-printed letterhead, hence the cachet of something being issued on "company letterhead". Take a sheet of company letterhead, pop it in the ol' Executive, and type-type-type.
> The signature is also in ink, so that’s either a third pass for color, or an actual signature, and the letter doesn’t have the notation to indicate that it was signed by the secretary, so that leads me to think that it wasn’t widely distributed.
I'm not really sure what potential significance you see in this. It was likely typed by the secretary and signed by the CEO. It's the original copy. Any copies required for the personal reference of the supervisory personnel affected would be made in the standard 1950s ways - a few carbon copies for the top executives, mimeographs further downstream if necessary.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Electric#Executive
Of course it was typed by a secretary. At a computer company I worked at starting in the mid 1980s it was not unheard of for some execs to have their admins print out emails for them and type in the handwritten responses. This was an internal-only system. No external email.
I know many old lawyers who still can’t type. They have admin staff (and junior solicitors) to draft correspondence for them.
They also charge enough for their services, as senior partners of big firms for it to make no sense for them to do their own typing.
As of 2010 it was not unheard of for old civil engineers to have their secretary print all email and maps, they would redline them, and the response would be typed or scanned as appropriate.
Being a touch typist was seen as kind of blue collar until everyone could afford personal computers at home..
Never learned to touch type. I can type pretty quickly but never took a course. Same with shorthand.
> It was pretty standard practice to have pre-printed letterhead, hence the cachet of something being issued on "company letterhead". Take a sheet of company letterhead, pop it in the ol' Executive, and type-type-type.
This was indeed standard until colour laser printers became cheap (and physically printing letters became less common), well into the 2000s.
At work, we still have several boxes of "company letterhead" in the basement, maybe 15,000 A4 sheets.
I should probably use it as scrap paper, there's no way it will ever be used for sending letters at the current rate.
Looks like it was written on an IBM Executive Model A:
https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/178vjlf/sample...
There were variable-width font typewriters starting in 1930:
https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/3ltlgn/have_va...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vari-Typer
That is a REALLY nice typewriter; wow.
Well of course IBM made typewriters! It looks like the 'IBM Executive' landed in 1944 with the ability to do proportional spacing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Electric#Executive
Wow, TIL.
IBM made a lot of very fancy typewriters so while I don't know what they had in 1953, one would assume that the president of the company would have access to the fanciest model they offered
Or his secretary would have :-)
Trying the ol’ Sam Donaldson dilemma from Bush Jrs first reign.