Keebin’ with Kristina: the One With the MingKwai Typewriter

Sometimes, a little goes a long way. I believe that’s the case with this tiny media control bar from [likeablob] that uses an ESP32-C3 Super Mini. From left to right …read more

May 12, 2025 - 18:19

Keebin’ with Kristina: the One With the MingKwai Typewriter

Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Sometimes, a little goes a long way. I believe that’s the case with this tiny media control bar from [likeablob] that uses an ESP32-C3 Super Mini.

An in-line media control bar with four purple-capped key switch buttons and a knob. — Image by [likeablob] via Hackaday.IO

From left to right you’ve got a meta key that allows double functions for all the other keys. The base functions are play/pause, previous track, and next track while the knob handles volume.

And because it uses this Wi-Fi-enabled microcontroller, it can seamlessly integrate with Home Assistant via ESPHome.

What else is under the hood? Four low-profile Cherry MX Browns and a rotary encoder underneath that nicely-printed knob.

If you want to build one of these for yourself, all the files are available on GitHub including the customizable enclosure which [likeablob] designed with OpenSCAD.

Portable Endgame, If It Exists

Perhaps [Palpatine]’s one mistake in creating this 36-key portable endgame is believing in the idea of the endgame in the first place. But I’m not here to judge.

A slim 36-key board based on the Seeed Xiao. — Image by [Palpatine] via reddit

Oh wait, yes I am! I really like this keyboard, and I think it would look right at home on the desk of the centerfold below it, although it’s supposed to be a go-anywhere contraption. Be sure to check out the gallery on this one to see it folded together for transport.

It would seem that [Palpatine] learned some nice tricks while designing this keyboard. Have you heard of 10440 batteries? They’re 3.7 V and usually cheaper than the square Li-Po batteries of the same size.

This bad boy is based on the Seeed Xiao nRF52840, which [Palpatine] believes is worth spending a little bit of extra money on instead of nice!nano clones, while being cheaper than an actual nice!nano would be.

As far as open-sourceness goes, [Palpatine] seems willing to share their design files, although they don’t seem to have been published anywhere at this time.

The Centerfold: White Light Might Bite At Night

A mostly-white setup with a wiiiiide monitor. — Image by [Embarrased-Yak-3766] via reddit

So this one isn’t quite as wide as usual, but it’s definitely more white than usual. I suppose that wiiiide monitor makes up for the missing pixels.

What do you think? Crisp and clean, or cold and clinical? I can’t decide. I definitely feel snowbound vibes, and I want to sleep in.

Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!

Historical Clackers: the Munson

The Munson typewriter, with much of its innards on display. — Image by [Martin Howard] via Antique Typewriters

The delight of the Munson typewriter is in the exposed internal workings, which come to life when the machine is in use. Those octagonal key tops aren’t too shabby, either.

You may have noticed that this machine has no typebars. Instead, it uses a horizontal cylinder about the size of a finger. The cylinder slides from side to side and rotates to find the chosen character. Then a hammer strikes from behind the paper, pushing it against the ribbon and the type cylinder.

Much like the later IBM Selectrics and the daisy wheel machines of the 1970s and ’80s, one could easily change the font by swapping out the all-steel type cylinder. The Munson has two Shift keys, one for upper case and another for figures, so only three rows of keys are needed.

The Munson came out in 1890 and was well-received. It won the highest medal awarded at the World’s Fair Chicago, 1893, but the machines are hard to find these days. Eight years after its introduction, the design of the Munson was acquired by the Chicago Writing Machine Co. and rebranded the Chicago.

Finally, the MingKwai Typewriter Emerges From Obscurity

So you get a Historical Clackers two-fer this week; lucky you! After more than half a century, this fascinating Chinese typewriter turned up while a couple was cleaning out her grandfather’s basement in New York.

Jennifer Felix and her husband Nelson posted photos on a Facebook group trying to ID the machine. A flurry of enthusiastic comments flooded the forum, with many people offering to buy the machine.

The MingKwai, an incredible Chinese typewriter with a mechanical search function that gets you the character you need. — Photo by Elisabeth von Boch, courtesy of Stanford Libraries; image via This Is Colossal

As it turns out, it’s a MingKwai — the only one in existence. And it’s now in the hands of Stanford Libraries.

This machine was invented in 1947 by a writer, translator, and linguist named Lin Yutang. The MingKwai, which means “clear and fast”, was the first compact concept Chinese typewriter to have a keyboard that was capable of producing 80,000+ characters.

How is that even possible? Mechanical sort and search. Seriously! Check this out: the 72-key board is made up of strokes and shapes, and the characters are arranged in linear order, like an English dictionary. To use it, you would press one of the 36 top keys and one of the 28 bottom keys simultaneously. This triggered a series of rotations in the internals and would bring eight characters into view in a small window that Lin called the “magic eye”. Finally, you would choose your desired character using the numbered keys in the bottom row.

The only known prototype was built by the Carl E. Krum company. Lin was unable to drum up commercial interest to produce it at scale, so he sold the rights and the prototype to Mergenthaler Linotype Company, where Jennifer Felix’s grandfather worked as a machinist. So it never went into production, and the prototype went home with with Grandpa.

Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.