this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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All that I'm aware of. Or to put it another way: every typewriter you're likely to encounter out in the wild.
It's a common trope for old whodunit mysteries, so I bet someone solved this particular problem but I'll also bet that they're not common machines.
this is not my area at all, but there's got to be some sort of ribbon design out there to randomize the travel after each keystroke
I had an old one as a kid that didn't advance the ribbon automatically anymore, so if you typed 4-5 chars, it would be a little dimmer, till you hit around 10 and couldnt really read it. So youd have to flick the wheel a little to advance it. Probably too annoying for real use, (and the reason my Nana had given it to me when I was 5) but would be great for short messages like this, and putting 5 chars on top of eachother makes a pretty unrecognizable jumble of lines on tbe ribbon.
duh, just remove the automatic repeatable part. this is why you should think before commenting, kids. jeepers look at me go
but yeah, while annoying for regular use, certainly doable for certain occasions. and probably could be semi-automated fairly easily
I feel like it wouldnt be too hard to fashion a spring that goes between the spindle and a modified cassette, so that as the spindle turns with each keystroke, the spring builds up tension, and enough letters to obscure all type in one spot, then it releases it all at once, advancing the tape.