[gonzo41]

I had a burst of creative thought, thinking about getting a typewriter and hooking up a ton of actuators to it so I could just slide it an array of a document to type out. But it'd probably move to fast or slow, jam and then there's feeding it paper.

It'd probably be easier to make a nice block alphabet for a plotter and then just print your documents as biro drawings.

But again, feeding paper seems like a very fiddly problem.

[WillPostForFood]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_wheel_printing

Daisy wheel printers were slow, loud, and had huge limits (no kerning, single typeface, no printing family photos), but the print quality was good. And if you are the kind of person who likes mechanical keyboard sounds, the sound of a daisy wheel printer is pretty cool.

https://youtu.be/ZVQkbT-g3aw

[mceachen]

> feeding paper ... fiddly

Printer paper came in long, laser-perforated sheets with tabs. You'd load in the start and one sheet pulls in the next.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_stationery

The crank you had to put into the front of the printer to get the steam-powered engine turning could jam in the transmission, though, and you had to watch the temperature of your coal-fired ink tank so it didn't over-boil. Those "electronic" printer guys thought they were so fancy.

[Nbox9]

The problem isn’t building an open source printer, the problem is building a good open source printer.

[gonzo41]

Yeah and resolution is another issue.

[trynewideas]

2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awxbu8y5cv8

"A reverse-engineered typewriter hack to make it into a printer. Using a simple MOSFET circuit and an Arduino (actually, a Light Blue Bean+ arduino compatible board), I reverse-engineered my IBM Wheelwriter 6 typewriter to print out text and some rudimentary graphics. The GitHub repository is here, and I'll continue to update it with schematics, etc., when I get some time: https://github.com/tofergregg/IBM-Wheelwriter-Hack"

Same user has a similar hack for a 1960s Smith Corona Sterling Automatic 12: https://github.com/tofergregg/smith_corona_printer

[adyer07]

You could look into the IBM Selectric - the typing element is a ball so it can't jam, and it's actuated by little cables that might be hackable. Feed it paper off of a roll, and you have your jam-free, continuous printing solution :)

[drewzero1]

A few years ago I took apart my Correcting Selectric III with exactly this aim. IIRC there are around six levers which can be actuated in different combinations to select and imprint all of the symbols on the type ball. I had a lot of fun selecting them by hand to try to map all of the combinations.

IBM must have had this use in mind because they actually made a variation of the Selectric design that could be used as a serial terminal. We have one in storage at work but I think the mechanism is seized. Wikipedia has a surprisingly long section about modifying the Selectric to work as a computer terminal[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter#Use_a...

[geocrasher]

https://hackaday.com/2012/06/13/turning-an-ibm-selectric-int...

[vekelly09]

I remember it well. All of us computer hackers back in the late 1970s did something like that with a bunch of solenoids. It worked, but you got about 12 cps on a good day, and only constant width fonts. Also, if one of your solenoids was a bit sluggish it would throw off the registration of some of the characters. The advent of daisy wheel technology killed off the Selectric printers. Remember daisy wheels, especially the early metal ones??

OTOH hacking an IBM Executive might have been something. Proportional spacing!! (but a much fiddlier mechanism)

[Finnucane]

I have a vague memory that there was even a commercial option for that--a device that fit over the typewriter keyboard, that you could buy, and it would drive the typewriter from the computer.

I had for a while a NEC Spinwriter--loud, slow, built like the proverbial tank. My recollection--it's been more than 30 years since I used it--was that it did support proportional spacing.

[Vrondi]

You need an 1980s Daisy Wheel Printer. Problem solved.