Keyboard Builders' Digest / Keyboard Spotting
Ballpoint typewriters
Typewriters from the '80s that used small ball point pens to draw text and graphics.
Published February 12, 2022
Stuff you haven't even knew existed but desperately need now? After last week's discovery of the MSX subculture, another one is already here: vintage plotters and ballpoint typewriters.
In her latest article, Hackaday's Kristina Panos mentions Paul Rickards' Twitter thread about ballpoint typewriters. Paul, who is an artist "exploring vintage plotters with modern code", also sells his amazing art (shop.paulrickards.com) made with plotters and maybe ballpoint typewriters(?).
But what the heck are ballpoint typewriters?
Did you know there were typewriters that used ball point pens to draw not just text but also graphics? I’ve collected several of these over the years – Paul Rickards.
Marketed in the mid '80s, ballpoint typewriters used small ballpoint pens to plot not just characters but also graphics.
They could type, came with some build-in graphic packages (pie, bar, line, radar charts), but when connected to a host computer via e.g. RS-232 serial port, they could be used as printers too: thus ballpoint typewriters were able to plot a wide range of graphics from simple graphs to intricate drawings generated by a computer.
According to Paul, Panasonic made three such models. The top shelf was the RK-P400C Penwriter which included the RS-232 port built in for computer control. It uses an Alps mechanism and tiny ball point pens in black, red, green and blue – the usual colors for these devices. In addition, this particular model also came with a white pen for error correcting.
The operating manual, referring to the RK-P400C as a "4-color graphic penwriter", lists among other specs the 24-character LCD display, 4KB/9-phrase text memory (total 3190 characters!), 10 different character sizes, italic mode, word wrap, search and edit functions.
In 1985, according to the July issue of PC World magazine, you could buy a Panasonic RK-P400C stuffed with all those features for $350.
The Panasonic RK-P400C Penwriter typewritter plotter drawing a design under computer control via RS-232 #plottertwitter pic.twitter.com/5ZTv5UDr7c
— Paul Rickards (@paulrickards) August 2, 2020
A lower end model was the Panasonic RK-P440 Penwriter. It had a computer input but required the K100 external interface. Otherwise functionally the same.
Finally, Panasonic also had the basic RK-P200C Penwriter which removed any computer control but kept the ability to do standalone business graphics.
There’s something so absurd and inefficient about a pen plotter, but it’s quite mesmerizing to behold a robot wield a pen to paper.
There were other manufacturers offering ballpoint pen based typewriters, such as Silver Reed and their EB50 model (Colour PenGraph EB50). It draws text and business graphics too but this one has a parallel port to act as a plotter.
Smith Corona sold the Graphtext 90 – with build-in graphs but without computer control.
And typewriter maker Brother offered the Type-a-Graph BP-30 which was marketed rebranded as Sears LXI Type-O-Graph as well. While the others must be relatively rare, you can find this one on ebay – at least in the US.
But there were also calculators with ballpoint pens: e.g. the Sharp El-7050. "It’s wild to use a calculator and watch the numbers being drawn to paper."
All of the typewriter models used the same ball point pens in four colors. The pens are rather scarce now, mostly new old stock with some exceptions for a couple of German companies that make replacements for medical equipment that fit.
Also, ballpoint typewriters were portable with a built-in handle and could run on batteries.
Published on Sat 12th Feb 2022. Featured in KBD #65 (source).
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