USBTypewriter: The Greatest Invention
Since Sliced Bread

I spent a couple minutes entranced by this goofy, paradoxical image. How funny is that!

But it’s not a hack. There really is such a thing as a USBTypewriter.

In fact, if you’re handy with a soldering iron you can buy a Do-it-yourself kit for $74 and upgrade that beloved manual typewriter now sitting in your closet.

Or simply buy a finished product in the inventor’s etsy store, fully assembled, tested and ready to go. Those are priced around $800.  

Knowing no greater devotee of the manual typewriter than Harlan Ellison I momentarily thought about saying let’s all chip in, get him one of these, and drag him forward to the glories of the 21st Century. Except he would never use it. As he told Jon Winokur the other day:

I always use an Olympia manual typewriter, either an office model or a portable. That’s all I use. Book face type. I do not use an electric because I type too fast. The ball can’t keep up with me. I use two fingers, 120 words a minute, no mistakes. I can’t use a computer. Despise it. It’s like another entity trying to get in my head and interfering and bothering me.

Never mind, I still think the whole idea is a hoot.

[Thanks to Tom Digby, Andrew Porter and Lee Gold for the story.]

4 thoughts on “USBTypewriter: The Greatest Invention
Since Sliced Bread

  1. If the ’50s sitcom I Married Joan, in which she was a secretary, were suddenly upgraded to the modern era, this is what she would be typing on, along with driving her atomic-powered flying car.

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