> And that typed text is way, way cleaner than any typewriter I’ve seen.
Pedantic point: electric typewriters (which have existed since the 1960s) do type in a way that looks exactly like this.
(In fact, note that the text on the real employee ID card, shown later in the article, doesn't look any less clean! It's just set in a different, narrower font.)
The smudginess of mechanical typewriters comes from 1. them striking (and especially, releasing) at the same speed you're depressing the key, and 2. having many of the keys necessarily approach the ribbon from an angle.
The keys being swung weakly by your fingers, also has the additional implication that the ink ribbons used in mechanical typewriters have to be soft and squishy (so: made of cloth), and use thin inks. These properties ensure a transfer from even a low-velocity impact. But the trade-off is that cloth ink ribbons transfer only a rough outline of what's struck; and thin inks are high-bleed inks.
An electric typewriter, playing out a pre-buffered line with a crisp, predictable report, using linear actuators and a rotating-ball type-head to bang a tape ribbon loaded with high-viscosity ink onto the page, can create text indistinguishable from books/newspapers of the same period, or from modern laser-printer reproductions of the same font faces. They're essentially character-at-a-time letterpresses!
(Also, ignoring electric typewriters for a sec: inks bleed more on thin, cheap paper. But this is [a forgery of] an employee ID card — where, for durability, a nice heavyweight paper or cardstock would have been used. You're always going to get a better-looking result inking such paper.)
Pedantic point: electric typewriters (which have existed since the 1960s) do type in a way that looks exactly like this.
(In fact, note that the text on the real employee ID card, shown later in the article, doesn't look any less clean! It's just set in a different, narrower font.)
The smudginess of mechanical typewriters comes from 1. them striking (and especially, releasing) at the same speed you're depressing the key, and 2. having many of the keys necessarily approach the ribbon from an angle.
The keys being swung weakly by your fingers, also has the additional implication that the ink ribbons used in mechanical typewriters have to be soft and squishy (so: made of cloth), and use thin inks. These properties ensure a transfer from even a low-velocity impact. But the trade-off is that cloth ink ribbons transfer only a rough outline of what's struck; and thin inks are high-bleed inks.
An electric typewriter, playing out a pre-buffered line with a crisp, predictable report, using linear actuators and a rotating-ball type-head to bang a tape ribbon loaded with high-viscosity ink onto the page, can create text indistinguishable from books/newspapers of the same period, or from modern laser-printer reproductions of the same font faces. They're essentially character-at-a-time letterpresses!
(Also, ignoring electric typewriters for a sec: inks bleed more on thin, cheap paper. But this is [a forgery of] an employee ID card — where, for durability, a nice heavyweight paper or cardstock would have been used. You're always going to get a better-looking result inking such paper.)