Typewriter clocks
As a kid I learned how to type on an old mechanical typewriter. One of those machines where every key was mechanically connected to a hammer. If you hit the key, the hammer would punch the paper. You had to use quite some force to make sure that the paper was hit hard enough — this is one of the reasons why some older people still hammer away on their keyboards with so much force. If you hit it hard, the letter would be bolder, if you hit it soft, the letter would be lighter, and if you didn’t hit it hard enough you’d have to type the letter again. This difference in thickness was of course something that was missing from ordinary digital typewriter fonts. Yesterday Erik van Blokland released his NCND typewriter font. A variable font that seems to be based on this idea of using variable force when typing. Of course I made a few clocks with it.
Clock no1.
The first clock I made is a simple one. When you load the page it types out the time, like 08:52. As you might see variable force is used to type each digit. Every time a minute changes, a new line is added and the new timestamp is typed, again with random force for each character. This goes on forever.
Clock no2.
Whenever you made an error with a mechanical typewriter there were two ways to undo it. The first one was to use a substance we called Typex in the Netherlands. It was a white fluid. You would paint it over the error, wait for it to dry, and then type over it again. The other option was to make the original text unreadable by typing a few random characters over it. This last option is built into the NCND font. I used this so called Stylistic Set for the second variant of this typewriter clock.
At first when you load this clock it looks the same as clock no1. But in this version, whenever there’s a new minute, the previous minute is first typed over with random characters before the new time is typed out. I like its rhythm, and I really like the look of it. It looks really good after a few minutes, especially on a very thin and high screen.
Clock no3.
These previous clocks look a bit as if you’re typing on an endless roll of paper. I didn’t have rolls to type on as a kid, I did have endless amounts of ISO format A4 paper though. So in this third typographic clock the time is typed onto a container with the ratio of 1:1.414 (or 1.414:1, depending on the dimensions of your screen). One of the more advanced features of mechanical typewriters was setting the margin. And if I remember correctly you could even set tab stops, if you wanted to type things in columns. And in this case I want to type the time in columns. The first iteration of this clock fills a sheet of “paper” with sixty timestamps in an hour. The second iteration of this same clock types the time every second, so it takes just one minute to fill a sheet. Much more fun to look at if you have a short attention span. I’m still working on the I made a print stylesheet for it. This means that if you leave the web page with this clock open for 24 hours it should result in a book with all seconds in a day, printed on 1440 pages. Which would be ridiculous to print, please don’t.
More ideas.
It’s interesting to see the memories that typewriters bring up. I showed these clocks to my colleague Irene. She had memories of her mother who taught at the Dutch school for management assistants. They had to type simultaneously on music, hahaha. And we marvelled over how powerful your fingers had to be if you wanted to type with all ten fingers on these mechanical typewriters. Which gave me the idea that this font needs a pinky-algorithm: All characters you would usually type with your pink should be lighter. I may write this script one day.
I created a version of this typewriter clock that writes out the time in words. It uses this pinky-algorithm: each finger has a different force.