I bet with some practice you'd get pretty good at it, certainly faster than hand-writing kanji. It looks like a maintenance nightmare though. You can see the tray of blocks moving around...
I bet with some practice you'd get pretty good at it, certainly faster than hand-writing kanji.
It looks like a maintenance nightmare though. You can see the tray of blocks moving around underneath as the user manipulates the little handle. I have to assume whatever mechanism attaches to that lever to grab, lift, and press the corresponding block to the ribbon must be pretty finicky, especially if you get sloppy and don't line up the target perfectly and get the timing precise on when you start moving the handle again after releasing the lever. It's probably a hand-eye coordination exercise on par with learning to drive stick. So easily learnable, but definitely requiring a bit of practice during which you can potentially screw up your very expensive machinery.
you've got to wonder what kind of typing speed you could manage on this thing. intimately learning that layout of characters would be a nightmare!
I bet with some practice you'd get pretty good at it, certainly faster than hand-writing kanji.
It looks like a maintenance nightmare though. You can see the tray of blocks moving around underneath as the user manipulates the little handle. I have to assume whatever mechanism attaches to that lever to grab, lift, and press the corresponding block to the ribbon must be pretty finicky, especially if you get sloppy and don't line up the target perfectly and get the timing precise on when you start moving the handle again after releasing the lever. It's probably a hand-eye coordination exercise on par with learning to drive stick. So easily learnable, but definitely requiring a bit of practice during which you can potentially screw up your very expensive machinery.