This Guy Turned A 90YO Typewriter Into An EDM Drum Machine To Play Music And It's Awesome!

The typewriter used to be a huge invention, but they are now nothing more than a collectible piece of equipment. These days, there aren’t many usable Remington portable typewriters out there, which is about 90 years old now. However, William Sun Petrus managed to find a new implication for the device by making it a makeshift drum machine.

He uploaded a video on YouTube about this creation, but it doesn’t reveal much about how the transition of the typewriter happened. It only includes a few short clips indicating how he soldered the wires together.

In the description, though, he says that when the individual letters on the typewriter make contact with a shiny metal bell called the live plate, a connected Arduino will identify which hammer just got pressed and will send a MIDI signal to the Ableton software on a computer. Now, the software will trigger one of the 17 available sounds, which allows the typewriter to be played like a piano hybrid or a drum machine.

The YouTuber didn’t reveal how the live plate works. It’s possible that it relies on a gyroscope inside for determining which hammer just made contact based on the movements generated by the sensor after impact as all letter hammers have different angles. But it’s more likely that each letter hammer is completing a circuit as it hits the plate, which is reasonable with all the wires in the typewriter.

Though this creation was likely made for fun and will not provide any practical use, it’s cool to see how an old machine is transformed for modern purposes.

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