Yesterday we feasted our eyes on the wristwatch of the great Albert Einstein, today we get a look a personal effect from a celebrity of a very different sort. Behold...Marylin Monroe's typewriter. One has to wonder whether the essence of these icons lives on in these artifacts, and whether or not using them would somehow magically fuse your life with theirs. If I wore Albert Einstein's watch, would I come to a more profound understanding about the universe? If I used Marylin' Monroe's typewriter, would I get the urge to send tear-stained, hysterical love letters to a dead president? Who knows? [Vanity Fair via Geeksugar via Boing Boing Gadgets]

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After artist Jeremy Mayer created this series of typewriter masks, he said, "I'm not going for whimsy. So I will probably never do a set again." That's a shame. Wired has a full profile of the artist along with a complete gallery of his intricate human-sized typewriter cyborg sculptures. There are worse ways to spend your workday. [Wired via bbGadgets]

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See that battered old Hermes Standard 8 typewriter there, in a fetching shade of institutional brown? I'd practically saw my own leg off to own it. Why? Because I'm a huge Douglas Adams fan, and that battered old thing is the very typewriter DNA used to bring The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the world. A surprisingly analogue gadget, for such a self-avowed technology fan as he. And get this: it's actually on sale by a British bookseller, as part of a package with a "fine" condition first-edition copy of Hitchhiker's. The package, complete with autograph on the typewriter lid, will set you back over US$25,000. A vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big sum. But, boy... wouldn't it be worth it? [Abe Books via BBG]

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ASCII has been doing the rounds online since the first acoustic coupler connected to a BBS. But what about going seriously old school? Melbournian Andrew MacRae has been creating ASCII art 60s style with a couple of typewriters: 1965 Olympia SG3 and a 1968 Hermes 3000.

It's a great blog of his work from over the past year and a half, and you can see the complexity develop over that time. Nods to Star Wars, and even one for the hoons, makes this a must link for mine.

See his art in this blog, and his Live Journal is over here. -Seamus Byrne
[via Boing Boing]

22 Pop is a modified typewriter that allows you to send emails. You type out the recipient, subject and message on a special template sheet and the message is sent when you pull the finished page out. The website claims that the device can also receive messages, but I can't see how it could print out an email. The project was inspired by the difficulty that one of the designer's mothers had when trying to email her daughter. [Interaction-Ivrea]