Welcome to the only site on the Internet completely dedicated to the IBM "Selectric" Composer line of typesetting machines. If you have a moment, please sign the guest book and let me know you were here. Click here for the Guest Book.

If you have sent me an e-mail and I did not reply to it, I apologize, and if it is still an important question, feel free to drop me another message. Please check below to see if your question has already been answered before sending me another e-mail. I have tried to reply to all mail, but the amount of mail that I've received regarding the Composer and its capabilities has been staggering.

The recent controversy of the authenticity of the Jerry Killian memos has brought notoriety to the IBM Composer, as well as lots of e-mails asking about the Composer's capabilities as well as my opinions of whether the documents in question are authentic. Since most of the e-mails have asked the same questions, I will try and answer them here.

Q: Do you think the memos are forgeries?
A: I am not trained as a forensic document analyst, so I cannot answer this. I can, however, state with pretty strong conviction, that I don't believe these documents were produced on any model of the IBM Composer. Without even looking at the documents, and just knowing what the "purpose" of an IBM Composer is, I feel that the odds that the colonel had one on his desk were worse odds than winning the NY lottery. The next possibility was that he handed off his "memos to self" to the publishing department, who would then type them with poor spacing (missing spaces after comas, etc), and hand them back to him. I don't think that happened. If anyone thinks that using an IBM Composer is a trivial task, I'd almost be willing to invite you over and give you 20 minutes to TRY and accurately produce a memo, with as much numbers/symbols/superscripts as those in question. Of course, the prereq is that you have no former experience with a Composer. You'll see that this is NOT a typewriter, rather it is a typesetter. Consequently, I do think it is possible that the memos may have been able to be produced on an IBM Executive Typewriter, and perhaps the military had one that had a dedicated "th" key on it.

Q: Can the Composer produce a "#" sign?
A: Yes, but.... it has to be on a special ordered font. There is no key on the Composer keyboard for a "#". There are two ways to produce this character. One, buy ordered a special customized font with the # on it, or by ordering "Press Roman Symbol - Greek" font, which contains the "#" sign. Using the second approach would require the operator to change the font ball each time they wanted to type a #, and the former approach would mean that the operator would have to memorize which key was assigned to the "#" since, even if they ordered a customized font, the keyboard itself would not show it -- it would have to be memorized.

Q: Where can I see the user's guide for the IBM Selectric Composer?
A: I have disabled the PDF version because it is too big for so many downloads. Click here for an online version.

Q: Can the IBM Selectric Composer produce a superscripted "th" as seen in the memos?
A: Yes, but not in one keystroke. To type 111^th, you would first type "111", then remove the 11pt font element, and replace it with an 8pt element, then change the escapement (horizontal spacing) to the narrowest setting, half reverse index the paper, type "th". Then, you have to reverse that process by half indexing the paper back down, replacing the 8pt font element with an 11pt font element, and returning the escapement lever back to the widest setting.

Q: How much did the composer cost back in 1972?
A: I have seen a sales receipt that showed $3600, but I don't recall what year it was. I have heard estimates that the machine went for as much as $4400.

Q: Can the Composer make curly quotes?
A: Yes. The composer keyboard is different from a standard typewriter. On the modern PC keyboard, the comma and period keys, when shifted, produce greater-than and less-than symbols, but on the composer, a shifted comma produces a single "open" apostrophe and a shifted period produces a single "close" apostrophe. To make a double quote, the typist would use two apostrophes, which look exactly like an opening quotation.

Q: Does the Composer automatically center justified text.
A: Yes and No - it depends on the model. The first IBM Composer models had no digital electronics, and therefore were 100% mechanical. They did not have the ability to automatically do anything. To center text on an IBM Selectric Composer, you would have to first determine the length of the line to be centered and then position the carrier (the ball) accordingly. The user manual shows 6 steps in order to center text. The later models of the Composer were electronic; the user could type the text in with a "center code" and when the text was replayed, it would be centered automatically.

Q: Do you think that the IBM Composer was used to produce the documents in question.
A: No, I do not. And my reasons are more practical than scientific. Let me explain. First, the IBM Composer is NOT a typewriter for general use. Those who used it were typographers/typesetters and were trained on its usage. It contained no error correction capabilities as modern typewriters do. The keyboard was somewhat rearranged from the standard keyboard of a Selectric typewriter. The ribbons used on this machine were specialized (and expensive) ribbons that produced very black output used for reproduction purposes. The machine was extraordinarily expensive. The odds of the military providing anyone, other than someone in a publications department, with a machine like this is unlikely. It is unlikely that Killian would have made the effort to make a superscripted "th", but not pay attention to basic spacing around a comma. My opinion is not a political one, rather it is just based on knowing the difficulty of using this machine, and knowing that it was found mostly in print shops, typesetting shops, small publication offices, and occasionally a law firm, but I've never heard of one on someone's desk (who wasn't a closet typographer). Even if Killian had asked someone else to type it for him, requesting that it be done on an IBM Composer would be like asking someone to phototypeset a memo on a Varityper. Its not practical.

Q: What font comes closest to Times New Roman?
A: Press Roman

Q: Could the IBM Executive Typewriter produce such a document as the memos?
A: It is likely that it could have. It is much more feasible that there were IBM Executive Typewriters at the colonel's disposal than IBM Composers for him to use. The IBM ET had proportional spacing. I do not have an IBM ET, so I cannot vouch for its capabilities. It is not impossible that the ET could have had a special key on the keyboard for the "th". IBM probably published a simple step-by-step method of centering text on the ET, but once again, this question is better suited to someone who is either an IBM serviceman or an enthusiast of the IBM ET.

Q: Does the IBM Composer have the capability to produce ligatures (such as "fl", and "fi")?
A: Not in one keystroke. I have looked through the font catalog and don't see any fonts that contain ligatures, however, using the incremental backspace, one could type an "f", then unit backspace, and type an i. Depending on the font, however, it may look pretty ugly.

Q: What is the character spacing on the IBM Composer?
A: The IBM Composer measured characters in "units" - a character occupied between 3 and 9 units. A "unit" size is dependent on the font's size. There were three preset horizontal spacing settings. A larger font size, like 11pt, would require the widest setting, while a smaller font such as 6pt would require the tightest spacing. That being said, here are the three unit sizes:

Widest: 12 units per pica, (72 units per inch)
Middle: 14 units per pica, (88 units per inch)
Narrowest: 16 units per pica, (96 units per inch)

Here is the table that shows the widths of all of the characters on the Composer keyboard:

Q: Does the IBM Composer have a numeric "1" key, or does the operator have to use a lower case "L"?
A: The composer has a one key just like a modern keyboard.

Q: Was it possible to order a customized font for the Composer?
A: Yes. According to the font catalog, there was a fixed number of symbols that could be chosen to replace up to 11 characters.

To start viewing pictures and narratives, click on the pictures of the composer on the left.