I particular look back at the mechanical typewriter with nostalgia as I used to type for hours on end on my dad's Royal 10 (now one of my prized possessions). There is actually a lot to like about the typewriter especially since it was the precursor to the computer age, and it's nice when scientific knowledge injects life into technology from yesteryear for practical purposes.

One great example of what I'm talking about is the Interactive Typewriter called Dico, which is an automatic typewriter that uses an ultrasonic sensor to detect a person walking past and then initiate a two-way conversation by connecting you to a random person somewhere in the world. Everything the other person and yourself type gets typed out automatically by the typewriter and communicated to one another in real time (like a fax machine would).

What's really cool about the Dico IoT project is how literary someone halfway across the world can physically typewrite something on physical paper without ever been present! Pretty neat, huh? It's interesting to learn that the Dico Interactive typewriter uses an Arduino micro controller and I wonder how much an improvement it would make if it were to use a more powerful micro-controller such as the STMicroelectronics ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller used by the RedBear Duo IoT development board.

The brains behind Dico is Joe Hounsham. I wonder if he has plans to launch his technology to market?
If you haven't seen the Interactive Typewriter before, here it is in action: