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Author
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Topic: Do you have an Al Shepard WSS ISP?
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spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 05-03-2005 04:06 AM
   
I would be very grateful if anyone with an inscribed Al Shepard WSS litho could please e-mail me a scan of the image (particularly the inscription and signature).I'm still trying to identify the key differences between the secretarial Shepard signatures and the genuine ones and to do this I need as many examples as possible. Inscriptions are of course very helpful in this respect, and some traits of the well-known secretarial inscriptions are easy to spot. In the end I hope to be able to put a guide online, along with an autopen guide that I'm part way through producing. Any help would be greatly appreciated. |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 05-03-2005 05:54 AM
A study of Shepard's secretarial signings was done some time ago (By S. Beck?). It is posted on the Yahoo Astronauts group. Here's a link, but you may have to sign up to access it. In my opinion, this covers most of the major features, but there are still secretarial examples out there which you may never get to correctly classify as they are so close to the real thing. |
spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 05-03-2005 10:03 AM
I've seen that two page article but with all due respect to it's author I do not believe it provides everything you need to know to identify a secretarial.Taking the five characteristics identified in the article in turn: - The sharp bottom loop of the "S" and the angle of the "Sh" joining line is not a good identifier. I've seen many genuine (in-person) Shepard sigs with extremely pointed bases to the "S" and with near-horizontal lines joining the "S" and "h". This feature is not a reliable indicator of Shepard secretarials.
- The "A" being smaller than the "l" is not a reliable indicator of secretarials either. There are plenty of genuine in-person examples with this characteristic, even in the examples given in the article. It may be true that a certain style of secretarial tends to have this feature but unfortunately so does the real thing.
- The tail on the final "d". It certainly seems that all secretarials have a tail on the final "d" of the signature but it seems there are plenty of genuine (in-person) signatures that also have this flourish at the end. Indeed, Shepard's own autopen patterns have this feature and it seems unlikely to me that he submitted secretarial signatures to the Autopen company instead of his own from the beginning of his career at NASA.
- The looping capital "E" in inscriptions is indeed characteristic of secretarial writing but I suspect Shepard may have used the same form with capital Es within lower case text. I'd like to see some examples of genuine inscriptions like this to be sure.
- The "To:" is certainly a dead-giveaway of a secretarial.
The final two characteristics identified in the article seem to me to be the only clear-cut signs of a secretarial, but unfortunately they only apply to features seen in inscriptions. If you have only a signature you have to rely on the first 3, and as I've tried to explain above I am not convinced that these are reliable guides.I should stress that I'm not trying to knock the work of the original author, these are just my opinions based on my own observations and the limited amount of material I have to examine. If someone out there with much more experience has a foolproof way of spotting secretarials I'd love to hear it. Personally I think it would be to the benefit of the whole community if this kind of information could be shared and discussed. Again, I'd love to receive scans of more inscribed Al Shepard WSS shots... |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 05-03-2005 11:24 AM
quote:
Originally posted by spaced out:
The final two characteristics identified in the article seem to me to be the only clear-cut signs of a secretarial, but unfortunately they only apply to features seen in inscriptions. If you have only a signature you have to rely on the first 3, and as I've tried to explain above I am not convinced that these are reliable guides.
The article is not meant to be definitive, e.g. it omits to mention the following secretarial characteristics: - a "spike" on the top of the "p"
- "Al" being joined to "an"
Ken Havekotte's submission to Relics with a timeline of authentic signatures is the best way of eliminating secretarials and I presume he has a pretty good idea of the various secretarial styles. |
spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 05-03-2005 12:00 PM
I'm not trying to criticise the article but it just seems amazing in this day and age that the primary references for this are a scan of a two page typed article from 10 years ago that's only available in the archives of a Yahoo group, and the Relics guide.I can't be the only one who'd like to see an online article on the subject. This is the 21st century after all.  |
spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 05-05-2005 01:31 PM
Maybe I should clarify that I'm not looking to buy an Al Shepard ISP. I'm looking for scan of as many examples as possible in order to help identify key characteristics of real vs secretarial signatures.I'd like to thank the ONE person who's replied so far. His examples help prove that points 2 and 3 of the original article referred to above are effectively useless as I suspected. |
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