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A USB Typewriter?

Posted by Cliff on from the reinventing-the-printer dept.

jashmenn asks: "In my search for a furthering of the arts combined with technology I recently had the idea of hooking up an electronic typewriter to my USB port. The idea is to eventually write a script that would automatically send the text of emails to be typed on the typewriter. Does Slashdot have know of resources I can use for combining new and old school technologies such as these?"

2 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Daisy Wheel by m0rph3us0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why not just get a daisy wheel printer from the 80s and hook it up to a usb to parallel/serial adapter? IBM also made some printers with ball type print heads.

  2. Low IQ today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Geez, the collective Slashdot IQ is particularly low today. Let's see, so far I've seen people asking why bother, use a daisy-wheel printer, use a teletype, and plenty more of "why".

    For pete's sake, people, he said he was doing this for "art". I think he's probably already considered other printer options (daisy-wheel, teletype, etc.) and wants to have a typewriter, for the look of it.

    At one point, I had an IBM Selectric typewriter that could also be driven by a parallel port (though the encoding was odd -- it might have been EBCDIC, come to think of it). That might fit the bill, though I've no idea where to find one. It'd certainly look cool. Be sure to send us a follow-up when you get this working. :)