In Mechanica Antiqua

  My SN midway through repairs       I have always been a fan of beautiful engineering.  That is one of the primary things that drives me to do the things I do, from writing and typewriter repair to photography.  I have dived deeply into those last two things in this blog, primarily my work with typewriter repair.  For as long as I can remember, there has always been this undying curiosity to see how things work.  To get an inside look, to examine all these carefully created parts and understand their purpose, and to appreciate the mind that conceived them.  Sometimes there are certain objects out there that encapsulate this appreciation so extremely; they demonstrate humanity's ability to dream of something brilliant and to execute it in total perfection.  I have always been a lover of "form follows function," in that there is an innate beauty that a crafted object achieves from it's utilitarian simplicity.  Muc...

  The Typestar 4/5 (Internally the 4, branded the 5) It has been a significant amount of time since I last updated a post on my blog.  Well, today I decided to dive into Thermal typewriting, a sub-category of electric machines that use thermal print heads, officially called "electronic typewriters."  I created a YouTube video at the end of last summer detailing my first thermal machine ever, a TTY or Teletype machine designed as an aid for the hearing impaired.  That machine featured a large VFD display and printed with a very low resolution thermal printhead. Typing late at night. I absolutely LOVE this display The TTY machine didn't get a whole lot of use, my go to machine for the last several months has been my Groma Kolibri, a little East German made portable with lovely typing action.  However as my daytime schedule became more packed with school and repair work, my time to write creatively or respond to letters shifted further and further into the night wh...

  Updated Image - Redid the Screen Bezels Tried to keep it as original as possible In the world of retro computing, especially portable retro computing, few computers are as iconic as the GRiD systems laptop.  GRiD pioneered the clamshell laptop design in the early 80s with the GRiD Compass, a staple in military and NASA missions, and both as seen in the director's cut of Aliens.  So when I realized I needed a laptop for business and personal use (can't always take a desktop everywhere), I settled on building one inside of a rusted out GRiD rather than buying off the shelf. There were two initial concerns right from the start.  First was concerning the keyboard.  Intended to use the original keyboard which consists of a rather strange layout.  Notice first the spacebar which is labeled "Bloomberg".  This laptop was custom built for the financial corporation, and included a financial keyboard with bucket loads of random custom keys I knew nothing about....