Long for the days of His Gal Friday and Citizen Kane , but can't give up your tablet? Check out the USB Typewriter by Jack Zylkin, who makes old things new again. The addition of a USB port and other electronics lets the typewriter serve as as a keyboard for inputting to a smartphone, tablet, or computer.
After graduating from Drexel University in 2008, Zylkin went on to help found Philadelphia's Hive76 hackerspace, a collective of artists, designers, and engineers. In 2010, he invented the USB Typewriter as a statement about the disposable nature of modern communications and devices. “Typewriters are just really beautiful and elegant machines [whereas] most computer technology today is so disposable and utilitarian,” he said in an interview with Avi Solomon on the Boing Boing website. “So, with the USB Typewriter project I am trying to rescue typewriters from garages and attics and put them to use again.”
In rescuing typewriters from obsolescence, Zylkin, who had hoped to become a Jazz musician before an accident redirected him into engineering, is also providing a service to the world of Music. Mechanical typewriters were common office equipment in 1950 when Leroy Anderson composed one of his signature pieces, The Typewriter , in which an actual typewriter is the solo “instrument”. Today, orchestras are often hard pressed to find the sort of typewriter needed to perform this piece.
If you already happen to own a typewriter you would like to recycle, and are inclined to do it yourself, you can purchase a DYI kit to keep you occupied over the holidays.
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