Turn Your Keyboard Into A Typewriter

I once read that American actor and filmmaker, Tom Hanks is a typewriter obsessive. He collects Remingtons, Triumphs, Vosses and Cole Steels the way Imelda Marcos collected shoes. 

 

"They are each different in design, action and sound – each one stamps into paper a permanent trail of imagination through keys, hammers, cloth and dye", he wrote in an opinion piece "I Am TOM. I Like to TYPE. Hear That?" in the New York Times, published August 03, 2013. 

 

Hanks sees beauty in the fact that you can type the word “typewriter” using just one row of the Qwerty keyboard. He can tell a typewriter’s brand just by its sound. 

 

And in August 2014, Hanx Writer, an iPad app that Hanks (right) designed, became the most popular free app ever in the Apple store. It simulates a typewriter keyboard, complete with clickety-clack sounds and the distinctive ding at the end of each line, on your iPad. 

 

You can even “insert” new pages too. Once you’ve typed the text you can email it, print it or share it from the app. 

 

Hanx Writer is a skeuomorph – a design that adopts the look and feel of another object – rather than a retro fashion statement. According to Clinton Mills of Hitcents, the creative agency that brought Hanks’s idea to fruition, there is an element of nostalgia to the app, but “it’s not gimmicky. It’s to show iPad users that whenever you type, the sounds of the typewriter make you feel like you’re composing something special”. 

 

When manufacturers tried bringing out “noiseless” typewriters in the 1920s, few people bought them, because they found it hard to imagine writing in silence. And businesses wouldn’t buy them because they preferred to monitor activity by the sound of typewriters clicking and clacking. 

 

Anyway, yesterday, on Boing Boing, I discovered daktilo ("typewriter" in Turkish, pronounced "duck-til-oh", derived from the Ancient Greek word δάκτυλος for "finger") which turns your normal, everyday computer keyboard into a typewriter. An old, clacking, ringing, belligerently loud typewriter, perfect for the coffee shop, library or tranquil workplace. 

 

It is actually a small command-line program that plays typewriter sounds every time you press a key. It also offers the flexibility to customize keypress sounds to your liking. You can use the built-in sound presets to create an enjoyable typing experience! 

 

This cool product is available for Linux, Windows and MacOS, so you have no reason not to do this.

 

And if that doesn’t do it for you, you can always get a real typewriter, insert some paper and have yourself some real action.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, Celtic encountered another Champions League defeat when they were beaten 2-1 by Lazio.

 

Kyogo Furuhashi showed great composure to slide in the game's first goal in the twelfth minute to give the defending Scottish champions hope of a rare home win in this competition – but the Serie A club hit back seventeen minutes later. 

 

Then, Celtic had to endure a late heartbreak when the Italians netted a 95th-minute winner. 

 

This consigned Brendan Rodgers' side to the bottom of Group E with zero points after two games.