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"Despite these inefficiencies, there are a few places where typewriters still clack away. New York City police stations, the desks of a few stubborn hangers-on,
by bootload 11y ago
"Despite these inefficiencies, there are a few places where typewriters still clack away. New York City police stations, the desks of a few stubborn hangers-on, and, increasingly, the apartments of hip young people who have a fetish for the retro."
And those who have a passing interest in securing certain types of information. [0] Why? Each machine uniquely fingerprints a typed document making it easier to trace leaks. [1]
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=typewriters+security https://duckduckgo.com/?q=typewriters+security
[1] "Unlike printers, every typewriter had its own individual typing pattern which made it possible to link every document to a particular machine, Izvestiya said."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23282308 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23282308
- ics 11y agoFor all practical purposes, so does any other way of producing a document from plain old desktop printing (http://33bits.org/2011/10/11/everything-has-a-fingerprint-%E2%80%94-dont-forget-scanners-and-printers/ http://33bits.org/2011/10/11/everything-has-a-fingerprint-%E...) to handwritten letters.
- bootload 11y agoAgreed, though I think the idea was also to remove the chance of any snooping via elint. I do notice the Ruskies choosing electric type writers probably for reliability and evenness of the print output. I remember the IBM Selectrics [0] I used hacking up for "text repro", [1] far superior to manual typewriters that had, depending on the quality of the machine uneven application of ink. If you scan a copy you get superior reproduction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter [1] To make print ready artwork you can type up the text, print a negative and reproduce positive film copy to work with. Old school optical reproduction technology.