Laughs in Pete Seeger
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Agreed.
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Truth.
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My thoughts exactly! (That is, after i stopped laughing when i first read this.)
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Those things are live; it outputs only when actual input is received. They go back to at least the 1930s, used to remote sign train orders in RR applications. I was surprised Atwood got a patent on hers.
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It’s fairly common for famous people to have multiple “signatures”
One for their real day-to-day stuff and one “autograph signature”
I remember Terry Pratchett telling a story about the first time he had a book signing, very early in his career, and not having realised this used his “everyday” signature. He then stopped for fuel on the way home and had to spend an hour signing his signature to get it back to what it looked like on his credit card
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Signing your name - or writing the same thing - over and over again is a recipe for pain. When Mr Neil Gaiman signs his books, he draws a different little doodle inside each one. Smart guy!
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Surely if they had made him write out 17 signatures that’s enough to write an algorithm that produces infinite variations that couldn’t be discovered by simple comparison? A gap in the market for a new generation of auto signers?
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Not even ‘famous’. I know one author who had chosen a fairly abstract signature at age 13 in the hope they would end up signing book copies for fans. On improbably achieving their goal, they were gently advised that using the same signature for books as your cheque book was a poor idea. So now they have a special quick-for-signing signature for their legal documents and one which is plausibly their own name for signing on flyleaves…
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Meanwhile… John Green…
My signed copy of the Anthroposcene review did not cost me anymore than an unsigned copy would have…
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My friends went to a Dylan concert. He never spoke to the audience and played with his back to them. It was difficult to tell which person on the stage was Dylan. They left before the show ended.
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Almost certainly S&S tried to get Dylan to sign them but he was being his usual self that day and couldn’t be bothered.
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Sounds like S&S is trying to weasel out of lawsuits by calling this a “mistake” and offering a full refund along with allowing the buyer to keep the book?
Is that a valid, legal tactic?
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I suspect built in variation is common in modern auto signers.
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Clearly not the one they used!
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Well it had at least 17 variations in it. But no, not random variations.
IMO that would really kill autograph markets 
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It may have been done all on Dylan’s end or by his people, unbeknownst by S&S. But I don’t know their policy on it.
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The melodist-industrial complex?
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Just encountered a reference to the first “auto signer”. Invented by Edward Cowper in 1879, called the “writing telegraph” and intended for railway use.
