# Could a Modern Forgery (1950's Document) Be Detected? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2008, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025 "2008-11-10T13:08:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/21 "2008-11-10T19:58:53Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Since the introduction of desktop publishing, knowledge of pre-digital typography has deteriorated at an alarming rate. > > How else could there have been such an avalanche of argument - most of it apparently in earnest - over whether the obviously laser-printed [Rathergate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathergate) papers were real? Yes, that was a hilarious spectacle. Especially since Dan Rather himself is approximately as old as the typewriter. Doesn’t he remember the technology of the mid 70s? That document should have been fishier than a cat’s breath at a clambake. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/22 "2008-11-10T20:01:44Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > No formal scientific testing was ever applied to the letters that she mentions. Despite her precautions and her research into the originals, she made enough mistakes that the experts in the community saw through her. Similarly, a high-profile recent case in the UK was resolved without resort to chemical testing. This centred around a book called _Himmler’s Secret War_ by Martin Allen, whose most sensational claim was that Himmler was assassinated by the British government - with the striking additional detail that the killer was the father of the well known editor and satirist [Richard Ingrams](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ingrams). This was based on a relatively small number of documents in a couple of wartime files in the National Archives at Kew. Investigations by them and the police concluded that the particular documents in question were forgeries that had been smuggled in and added to existing, legitimate NA files. What’s particularly interesting in the context of this thread is that the National Archives have put online [the independent forensic technical reports](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/foi/log2007.htm) they’d commissioned. The expert didn’t do any chemical analysis to date them whatsoever. His reports do go through the detailed physical characteristics of the documents and he obviously checked for things like datable watermarks. What damned them, however, was his conclusion that _they’d all been typed on the same typewriter_ when they’d supposedly been written by different people in widely separated locations. He couldn’t really thus actually date the documents, but could show that as a group they were fishy. (At some point another forensic expert did suggest that one of the letterheads could only have been produced by a laserprinter, which would be more decisive.) Along with the internal evidence of whether the detailed contents of the document are plausible, I suspect this sort of conclusion is the norm in such cases rather than chemical testing trying to establish a date. Which isn’t to say that such testing isn’t done - the Hitler Diaries or the Netherlands Institute for Wartime Documentation’s [study of Anne Frank’s diary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl#Attacks_on_the_diary), for example - but the stakes have to be relatively high for it to be worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/23 "2008-11-10T20:17:17Z")
> [@Bytegeist](#): > > since Dan Rather himself is approximately as old as the typewriter. Doesn’t he remember the technology of the mid 70s? Not a lot of people would remember the particular typewriter in question here. It was a sophisticated high-quality model that used proportional spacing, and wasn’t used widely or for very long. And few things are as forgotten as forgotten technology. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/24 "2008-11-10T21:24:19Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Not likely, they use 1950 as the standard, and there’s usualy a +/- of 40 years. More or less, depending. I actually never suggested dating using Carbon-14 - I suggested that an analysis of the C[sup]14[/sup] content would indicate whether the paper had been produced before the nuclear tests in the mid 50s. You would need some standards for comparison, but the results should be pretty compelling. It is the battery of tests that can be done now, and the accuracy they deliver, that would make it so easy to detect. But the real art of forgery is to make the forgery so plausible that no-one actually questions the authenticity, and so these tests are not applied. Si ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2008, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/25 "2008-11-10T22:11:00Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > The only screw-up he made was the ink. He made at least one other major goof: his “Oath of a Freeman” (IIRC) was etched in a big piece of brass for printing and careful examination of it proved that it could not have been typeset (I believe there were overlaps between ascenders and descenders). ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/26 "2008-11-12T12:44:52Z")
The reason why i asked, is that i bought 9at a yard sale) a book from 1951, autographed by the author. Could the signature be a forgery? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/27 "2008-11-12T13:10:34Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > The reason why i asked, is that i bought 9at a yard sale) a book from 1951, autographed by the author. Could the signature be a forgery? Ah, that’s quite different! Unless the forger duplicated an entire book, the book is probably geniune. You need to know if the _signature_ is genuine, right? First, you need to compare the sig with known good ones of the same person. If it is a big deal, you need the services of a document examiner (NOT a graphologist!). He will look at the ink and signs of pressure on the paper as well. Is this a major author, such that the addition of a signature would greatly increase the book’s value? If not, the chances of a forgery are much less. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/28 "2008-11-12T15:12:07Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > It would, but it also introduces additional risks. Even if the paper and ink are the right age, they may not have _aged_ appropriately - telltale chemical changes in the ink and paper that may (or may not) have occurred in stored original stock as opposed to a completed document filed away for 57 years. And real original stock will need to be _distressed_ to look appropriately old, using chemical and physical methods that may leave trace residues. > > I don’t believe that any forged document purporting to be from the 1950s could stand against a full modern forensic workup, if you had appropriate contemporaneous exemplars. The number of tests that could be run is huge - GC/MS, Xray, radiometric, NMR, IR can all be useful. The real issue is (as **Paul in Saudi** pointed out above) knowing **when** to throw that level of analysis at a possible forgery, compared to the value of the benefit from the forgery. > > Oh, and that GC/MS with isotopic analysis will be able to tell you that that Provence wine was made with grape concentrate shipped from Australia, aged in oak barrels from the Czech republic, and tarted up with ethylene glycol from a '89 Citroen 2CV 😉 > > Si You can’t fool me. 2CVs don’t use ethylene glycol. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/29 "2008-11-12T15:54:35Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > How else could there have been such an avalanche of argument - most of it apparently in earnest - over whether the obviously laser-printed [Rathergate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathergate) papers were real? The funniest part of the whole thing is that the secretary who would have typed the originals is still around to ask, had CBS bothered. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/30 "2008-11-12T17:14:42Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > The reason why i asked, is that i bought 9at a yard sale) a book from 1951, autographed by the author. Could the signature be a forgery? Sure it could. But without knowing more information, there’s no way to tell. Remember that authors get asked to sign old books all the time. Is the signature dated? When did the author die? Was it inscribed to the people who held the yard sale? Fake signatures on books do happen. But if somebody were trying to pull a fast one, why sell it at a yard sale for presumably peanuts rather than on the internet for large sums of money? You need to ask yourself, what are the odds? ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/31 "2008-11-12T19:03:47Z")
Speaking of French wine, wine forgeries are believed to be a [huge problem](http://www.decanter.com/archive/article.php?id=129626) in the auction market. I can’t find the article now (I heard it on NPR, I believe, so it may not have a transcript), but I believe the upshot of creating forgeries (at least for the wine market) is this: You can forge almost any wine (the bottle/label, that is … once it’s opened, it’s obviously too late to complain), but at a certain point, the cost of doing so convincingly outweighs the money you could make on that wine at auction. I believe the breakeven point for current detection methods is in the tens of thousands of dollars (30-60k per bottle, I want to say). If the wine bottle would sell for less than that, it’s not worth doing. You don’t want to spend $50,000 creating an undetectable forgery of a wine that will only sell for $500 a bottle at auction. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/32 "2008-11-12T19:12:57Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > The reason why i asked, is that i bought 9at a yard sale) a book from 1951, autographed by the author. Could the signature be a forgery? Probably it is legit. Did you pay extra for the signature? If not, there was no profit the deal for a forger. ---
**Author:** ![butler1850](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@butler1850](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butler1850)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025/33 "2008-11-12T22:17:15Z")
As for wine forging, the book [Billionaires Vinegar](http://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Vinegar-Mystery-Worlds-Expensive/dp/0307338770) details much of the mystery, and problems that wine forgeries from very old vintages has caused. They talk about 17th & 18th century wines, and lack of provenance, and other details quite extensively. Interesting read. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-modern-forgery-1950s-document-be-detected/472025.md?page=1)