Autopen: real ink, mechanical path
Autopen machines were used heavily by politicians, astronauts and studio publicity departments. The signature contains genuine ink and pressure, but the machine repeats a stored path exactly. Overlay two examples and they match to the millimetre — no human ever signs identically twice.
Preprint: no ink at all
A preprint is part of the photographic image. Under a loupe you will see the same dot structure as the picture itself, and the signature has no relief. Studio fan photos from the 1970s and 1980s are frequently preprints and were never intended to deceive.
Secretarial: a real hand, the wrong hand
Secretarial signatures were written by staff answering fan mail. They are the hardest of the three to detect because everything physical about them is genuine. Detection relies on comparison with dated exemplars, and on knowing which figures used secretaries and in which periods — the kind of knowledge that comes from decades in the trade.
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