Typewriter Art

Keira Rathbone creates elaborate drawings using an old 1960s typewriter. I guess someone must still manufacture ribbons for those things. She says she mostly uses dashes, slashes, and brackets. Letters are more useful for shading. You can check out more of her work at her website.



     Posted By: Alex - Fri Nov 01, 2013
     Category: Art





Comments
A £5 typewriter beats a £50,000 Lexus any day!
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 11/01/13 at 11:00 AM
Many moons ago, it was the thing for bored computer programmers / operators to make the line printers spit out portraits of whatever. We used to call it "ASCII Art." It's good to see that the desire to make mechanical art hasn't been smothered with the invention of Photoshop.
Posted by KDP on 11/01/13 at 12:33 PM
ASCII art is still used in the text NFO's of most movie and game "pirate" groups.
Posted by BrokeDad in Midwest US on 11/01/13 at 03:18 PM
How about the title pages on BBS's? Some of those were pretty intensive.

For those of you too young to recognize the term "BBS", it was the forerunner to the WWW. Damn, I feel old.
Posted by KDP on 11/01/13 at 04:49 PM
Very cool and artistic!
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 11/01/13 at 06:26 PM
Can you still get fan fold paper so you can print a banner?

Has anyone else used a clothes iron to flatten Hollereth computer punch cards after coffee got spilled on them? It worked!
Posted by BMN on 11/01/13 at 07:32 PM
@KDP: I wrote code to create letters/words in ASCII art! And, yes, I had a BBS aimed at kids wanting to practice their English.

@BMN: My ship in the Navy had one of the 1st seagoing computers on board as a pilot program. It took us longer to do the payroll lists on punch cards than if we've just typed them up!
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 11/02/13 at 12:37 AM
I would have thought that a typewriter artist would be more keyed up about her work! :lol: :coolsmile:
Posted by Tyrusguy on 11/02/13 at 08:31 AM
Lineprinter nudes! I worked at a computer graphics engine manufacturer for a while. It didn't take long to figure out how to translate the characters for a lineprinter nude into dots of varying shades of pink, better suited for display on a color terminal. Of course, the picture went from several feet long on paper to almost too small to see on the screen, but hey, it improved my programming skills. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.
Posted by TheCannyScot in Atlanta, GA on 11/02/13 at 11:02 AM
I'm surprised that you're surprised that typewriter ribbons are still available. I have 3 typewriters, all in excellent working condition, the oldest being a Royal portable I received when I learned to type in 1961. I've never had a problem getting ribbons for any of these, and based on a simple Google search, I never will.
Posted by phritzg on 11/02/13 at 01:40 PM
I doubt many will remember punch cards like we had in college for the VAX 370 type systems that ran PLC, Fortran, COBOL, etc ...

Us old "fogies" have been around since the invention of the internet when it was BBS boards on a dial-up modem that allowed one user at a time. Anyone remember PC Pursuit ? It let you connect BBS boards around the country for a set monthly fee via telnet. We used it as teens to download stuff and upload our own hacked software for the Amiga and Atari 400/800 and later the 520/1040ST computers.
Posted by BrokeDad in Midwest US on 11/02/13 at 02:22 PM
I'm pretty sure we had the discussion before on WU about our earliest computer experiences. Someone, I seem to recall, trumped mine, but not by much. I go back, circa 1971 in high school, to a remote teletype and keyboard unit--no monitor whatsoever--communicating with a nearby corporation's DEC machine.
Posted by Paul on 11/02/13 at 03:46 PM
1971 in high school eh ? Paul is really old ... Patty and I were born in 1964... so you win old computer stories buddy .. mea culpa
Posted by BrokeDad in Midwest US on 11/02/13 at 04:04 PM
If we are bragging about how old we are ~~~ My boss in (I think) 1972 bought a pocket calculator [+,-,*,/] for $2xx.00 and bragged about it. About a year later with 2 box tops you could get the "Wise Old Owl" for $5.00
Posted by BMN on 11/02/13 at 04:56 PM
My father worked as a engineer for Bowmar and I have several prototype calculators et al they produced. Texas Instruments sued them and they went into producing military electronic devices and exited the consumer calculator business.
Posted by BrokeDad in Midwest US on 11/02/13 at 06:22 PM
One very important reason for typewriters to still be used these days: any email can be intercepted by the NSA or the KGB. A carbon copy, transferred by a trusted agent in person, can't.
Posted by Richard Bos on 11/03/13 at 08:14 AM
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