Back in 2021, Lego released a gorgeous typewriter set. As per Lego’s official site, the set was based on an actual real-life machine used in the 1950s by the company’s founder, and it remains a strikingly beautiful piece of design—you could feed a real sheet of paper through the rollers, its carriage moved as you typed, and each key press triggered a lever that whacked an individual letter against a ribbon. The set is now discontinued, although you can still get hold of it on Bricklink for less than $200.
But there was one thing Lego’s typewriter didn’t do: it didn’t actually, y’know, type. The ribbon was a piece of inkless fabric, and the letter blocks were plain 2×1 Lego bricks. For all its cleverness, the set was essentially ornamental.
YouTuber Koenkun Bricks set out to do one better. In a new video on his channel, he chronicles the construction of his own Lego typewriter—which, unlike the original, does indeed commit letters to paper. Well, OK, not actual paper. If anything, Koenkun Bricks’ typewriter is more ingenious—it takes 1×1 round Lego tiles, each adorned with a letter of the alphabet, and slaps them onto a scrolling sheet of white Lego plates.
The Rube Goldberg-esque contortions through which Koenkun Bricks’ design bends itself to do this are really something to behold. Instead of connecting directly to a lever that presses a letter against a ribbon, each key on this typewriter instead triggers three separate mechanisms: one to release a letter tile, one to move the carriage into place, and one to press the tile onto the “paper.”
The first mechanism pushes a lever that slides a single tile out from the bottom of one of the 26 separate storage bins mounted atop the device. From there, the tile travels down a ramp and comes to rest on a flat shelf directly in front of the paper. Releasing the key releases this lever, allowing another letter tile to slide into place, ready for the next time that letter is typed.
The carriage movement is achieved via a mechanism at the device’s rear. The entire carriage is tensioned with a rubber band, and its left side juts up against a series of loose 1×1 headlight blocks in a narrow race. Each key press ejects one of these blocks, allowing the carriage to slide one stud’s width to the left; the rubber band pulls the carriage into this position.
Cleverly, while the first two mechanisms are triggered by pressing a letter key, the third is instead fired when the key is released, giving the letter tile time to slide into position. Pressing the key down primes this mechanism, drawing the lever responsible for pushing the tile into place back like the arm of a catapult. When the key is released, a rubber band snaps the mechanism back into place, providing the necessary force to “type” the letter.
There are obvious limitations—despite trialing a mechanism that automatically reloaded the spacing blocks, Koenkun Bricks abandoned it as too unreliable, so they need to be replaced manually after each line is typed. The paper also needs to be scrolled manually. But these are minor quibbles—after all, this is a freaking Lego typewriter that actually types. Koenkun Bricks ends his video by putting it to use, typing a rather touching missive to Lego’s design team. “Dear Lego team,” he writes, “your toy fills my days with limitless creative crafting.” And indeed, he’s not the only one—Lego continues to both inspire and enable all manner of magnificent lunacy. Long may it prosper.
