posted 03-16-2013 08:37 PM               

Could I please get your opinions on the following signature.

Firstly, should I be concerned about the "grainy" appearance? And, secondly do you think it is an original, autopen or secretarial? I can't get any history from the seller. I've looked at the autopen guide and there is a lot of variation over the years. I can't see any others with a tail on the 'n' like this.

posted 03-17-2013 01:38 PM               

There was another rubber stamp impression of his signature in use when the pioneer astronaut/moonwalker was with the Mercury Seven Foundation and the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, even though, it was mostly used on general correspondences.

It was an Multimarx automatic personalizer self-inking stamper first used by his foundation offices in the late 1980s.

While the above impression submitted by Ian of Australia is not the same signature pattern that I am referring to, I do believe this one depicted above may be an earlier rubber stamp impression. But this one is different than what was in use at Langley Field from his early astronaut career as noted in the first paragraph.

Perhaps after America's first spaceman left NASA and the Navy after 1974, he may had authorized use of a stamp impression of his name while with Marathon Construction Company, Coors, and/or with other of his business enterprises.

Or, just maybe, it was produced by someone or an agency not even related to Alan Shepard in anyway.

posted 03-17-2013 03:24 PM               

In my own collection, I do have a Grissom applied-secretarial signature from his Mercury/early Gemini days, however, rarely did I ever see or know of a rubber stamp signature from him. But I do recall having, long ago, a stamped-impression of his name on a "signed" Mercury astronaut group picture.

Many were also printed as well with at least 2-3 different variations that I know of.

The same could also be said of Schirra and Cooper. We know of a few different secretarial patterns that were applied, but here again, rarely were there any rubber stamps of their names, to my knowledge.

Slayton on the other hand, as with Shepard in his later years (1980/90s), also had commissioned a rubber stamp impression of his signature used by the astronaut foundations.

posted 03-17-2013 03:39 PM               

That said, my statement was based on less on responses to autograph requests — which both Grissom and Shepard also relied on the autopen machine — and focused more on the day-to-day documentation used at the Manned Spacecraft Center.

posted 03-17-2013 05:46 PM               

But keep in mind that autopens were not available for most of the original Mercury astronaut team until the new Manned Spacecraft Center had been established in 1963.

Because of the popularity with Shepard's maiden space feat in 1961, it would appear the Space Task Group, located at Langley Field in Virginia, produced a rubber stamp impression of Shepard's name along with perhaps "the first" astronaut autopen of America's pioneer spaceman in that same year.

Regarding interoffice memos and other office file paperwork, I would think internal rubber stamps of the early astronauts, in addition to non-astronaut key officials like Gilruth, Kraft, etc., were indeed used perhaps on a daily or regular basis.

I am sure, Shepard along with Grissom, had their share of secretaries using such rubber stamp devices throughout their NASA careers, even if Shepard secretarial signatures were applied more often than Grissom. But is that a fact we know for certain?

Wouldn't it be great someday to come across or discover some of the early astronaut internal "signed" paperwork from either Langley or Houston?

In my own collection I've got interoffice carbon copies, etc., but have never seen--to the best of my knowledge — an actual rubber stamped signed impression on such a paper from an original first seven throughout the Mercury era.

posted 03-17-2013 06:16 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Havekotte:
Wouldn't it be great someday to come across or discover some of the early astronaut internal "signed" paperwork from either Langley or Houston?

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