Autopens and autographs: what’s really a real signature?

Autopens are in the news.

President Trump is claiming documents signed by his predecessor Joe Biden using the device no longer have any power.

That’s a political, legal, and moral question.

But, for autograph collectors the autopen is a big issue.

We’ll look here at what autopens are.

What their use means for autograph collectors.

And, how to spot autopen signatures.

It’s a subject we’ve looked at before and there are some useful links at the end of this blog.

What is an autopen?

Simply, it’s a signing machine.

The current iteration takes a physical recording of a signature that can then be replayed and reproduce the signature exactly without the involvement of the signer.

The idea has been around since 1803, when a polygraph (not the “lie detector” machine) was invented. A mechanical arm with an attached pen allowed the user to make an exact simultaneous copy of their hand-written work.

Someone who did was President of the United States Thomas Jefferson. He had at least one of these early pens and used them to create duplicates of his correspondence to keep.

Founding father, US President and high-tech enthusiast Thomas Jefferson who immediately grabbed one of the earliest duplication devices.

This very simple machine remained around - I had something like it as a child’s toy used for tracing drawings - for a long time.

It was in time superceded for the specific purpose of making signatures by the Robot Pen in the 1930s (with a 1939 commercial release).

This device pioneered the concept of recording a signature for later use using a mechanism somewhat like that used to record sound onto a vinyl record.

But it was in the US Government that the autopen came into its own when Robert M. De Shazo Jr’s managed to sell his version of the machine to the US Navy.

A few years later, he reckoned there were over 500 autopens being used in Washington DC.

Autopens, authenticity and autographs

Autopens work very well.

And that’s the problem.

What do you want from an autograph?

Most collecting is driven by rarity and connection.

And the things we collect must be authentic - and demonstrably so.

Autopen signatures are somewhat authentic.

Putting aside any political or legal weight one might give to a signature, an autopen autograph does have a direct, physical link to the signer.

Nixon photo portrait with autopen signature.

This is a Nixon autopen signature. Anyone who faces a high demand for their name on paper has probably used some method of mass production.

Though it is mediated through a machine.

Autopen signatures are also somewhat rare.

Autographs are sometimes “faked” deliberately to scam money out of people.

Sometimes the intention is somewhat more innocent: it is simply to meet a demand that cannot be met by the signer.

Autopens are one way of doing this.

Others are handstamps or proxies (usually called secretarial signatures), which are notorious among Beatle signature collectors.

And, we can assume that all sorts of high-tech printing techniques are also being used by forgers.

Autopen signatures cannot be made without the participation of the signer.

And they can be somewhat rare.

The machines are expensive. They are most often used by official figures.

We know that Queen Elizabeth II used an autopen quite extensively.

While autopen signatures add a distinction to a photograph, card or letter.

Markets do not value them so highly. And most collectors would vastly prefer a hand-signed autograph.

And they certainly want to know if they are buying an autopen signature and will consider themselves to have been somewhat fleeced if they buy one without being told.

To return to our old friend Thomas Jefferson and his infernal duplicating machine. Many document collections and sales will record Jefferson letters as "retained copies" meaning that they were made on his polygraph machine.

A copy of a letter from Jefferson written and signed with his machine. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.

How does this affect the value? Jefferson isn't that typical for this market (he's such an important figure and this machine made only single copies). But, this year we can see a letter from Jefferson described as "handwritten" is being sold for upwards of $90,000. And, in 2024 a retained copy from his machine was sold for $10,000.

These aren't one-on-one comparisons, but they are suggestive.

How to spot autopen signatures

Autopen signatures, if we are to call them fake, are good quality fakes.

They can betray themselves though.

Because they are automated they produce a signature with uniform pressure. Most hand signatures have variations in pressure.

They land on the page with a dot as they are lowered straight down by a machine.

And a dot can show where they stop too, as the pen stops and stays in place for a moment before it is lifted by the machine.

A mid-20th-century Autopen model of the sort that became common in government services. Image by Benjamin Olding, International Autopen Company, Wikimedia Commons.

Lines can have a tell-tale wobble too as tiny vibrations caused by a motororised arm are transferred to the paper.

And, if a particular signature is shown to be an autopen copy it can be used to identify others, which will be identical in every detail - including dimensions - in a way that human-made signatures almost never are.