TWO RUBAIYAT BOOKS

They are both the same edition, the one on the left is a copy I sourced some years ago and the one on the right is the Verse 70 Inscription book said to have been given to Alf Boxall by the nurse Jestyn.

In the past month or so I have been examining the Boxall book in greater detail, in the past I have run comparisons but not to the depth you will see below. The outcome is really quite astonishing.

Let's look at the title pages of both books, in particular, the word THE as in THE RUBAIYAT:

As you can see, they are slightly different colours which are probably down to the severe paper shortages at the time these books were printed.

When you look closely at my copy on the left you will be able to see that each letter has a white outline, the Boxall book, however, does not have that outline, in fact, the letters have no outline at all.

You might also notice that each letter in the Boxall book is slightly 'wider' or 'fatter' than the GC copy, here's an 'overlap' view:

There is a definite difference between the letters. Given that both copies were meant to be from the same printer, then the typeset should be the same for each. The white outline is another major difference for which I have no solid explanation at this time, however, I suspect that the Boxall copy is a 'custom' print job.

This suspicion is only enhanced by the next image comparison, it is of the letter T:

The T in this image clearly shows the white outline, but it's when we rotate and compare the two letters, one from my copy and one from the Boxall copy, that we see something really significant:

WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?

Look closely, there are 5 horizontal lines running through the upright section of the T. Each line contains letters and numbers which in my estimation are around .175 mm in height.  The horizontal lines extend through the crossbar or top of the T which you should be able to make out. It is possible for letters to be written at this extremely small size. In some areas, you can see where the written characters appear to marginally overlap the outline of the letter

They do not match the type of lines that you find in a scan which would be much closer together. The background of the image does not carry anything like a similar pattern.

SO, they are either super small handwritten code characters or they may be a very rare example of a particular kind of microdot. Microdots are mistakenly thought of as being simple dots when in fact they were able to be produced in many shapes, including letters it sees. I have spoken to an old friend, a printer, who tells me that you would not see this on the face of a typeset character.

Far more work to be done before we can categorically say precisely what these markings are even though you can certainly make out letters and numbers.