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by moron4hire 3599 days ago
I know Jack Zylkin personally and was there at Hive76 when he made the first USB Typewriter. It was a joke that took on a life of its own and ended up playing its own joke on its master. He made the first one for a contest on Instructables.com, intending to sell a kit version for anyone to make anything into a keyboard. He got so many calls and emails asking for pre-made typewriters that he basically had a business drop in his lap. I know they originally started out around $250, fully assembled, but last I checked he had bumped up the price to at least $700 just to try to curb demand (building the first or second is fun, definitely not the 15th or 30th) It somewhat unintuitively had the opposite effect as he started showing up in a number of luxury goods blogs.

They are quite labor intensive to build. He was never able to find someone with both the manual dexterity, electronics knowledge, and willingness to scrape by on a pittance to be able to live an independent life to bring on as help.
2 comments
tracker1 3599 days ago
Wish I'd gotten one when they were $250... at the current price (over $1250) just can't bring myself to do it... though sourcing original materials is probably part of the increased cost, and the labor. Really cool concept. I have a spare computer setup to keep people off my desktop, at home, and this would be cool to have on that.
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moron4hire 3599 days ago
At least 5 years ago he was starting to talk about how it was getting harder and harder to find intact typewriters. Apparently there is a very limited, dwindling supply, thanks to people converting them to keyboards.

If you can find a typewriter of your own, he sells kits for much, much less. They don't require any soldering and the logic board comes pre-programmed, you just have to pay attention to the instructions.

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tracker1 3599 days ago
Mechanical typewriters are mostly antiques, and can't imagine how many have been recycled or in landfill space over the years at this point. So I would think that sourcing would be the biggest issue in this. Though having used a mechanical typewriter when I was young, it's hard to imagine many people preferring the experience.
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mcguire 3599 days ago
They're running $1300 now.
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moron4hire 3599 days ago
I know it seems kind of crazy for this thing to cost as much as a nice computer, but you have to understand: the guy was killing himself building these things for people. When he first started doing this, I argued with him for so long about raising his prices. He was getting super depressed about working on these typewriters all the time. He thought raising the price was selfish. He just couldn't see that he needed to do it just to protect himself.

He sells the kits at a much more reasonable price. But if you want him to build you one, you definitely pay a premium.

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