Steampunk PC from Datamancer

Thanks for replying. Yes, come to think of it a telegraph sounder would be somewhat aptly described as a “clacker”, but a sounder and a key are sort of opposite ends of a spectrum and should not easily be confused.

Good point. I’m used to thinking of the combined units, which this isn’t.

If a sounder clacks, a key clicks. … [Standing on my inclination to start free associating from that…]

… It may or may not be worth noting that one of the past projects in that community was a telegraph sounder hooked up to spell out text coming in on an RSS feed.

That’s cool, but if you want to sound like you are down with the CW/Morse/Telegraphy crowd, you’d call it a key, or a straight key. A clicker is old school for TV remote.

Oh, I remember that! I thought that was very cool indeed.

Hm. My grandparent’s old TV was of the generation which used tuned metal bars struck with hammers to produce remote control tones, which a microphone and resonant circuits in the set would pick up and respond to. Since the tone generator/remote is purely mechanical it’d certainly be reasonable for a steampunk milieu…

[… or, if you needed to justify a steampunk remote control, you could wire it with a sound chip which produced this sort of tuned “ping” in however many different notes were necessary. Hmmm.]

I was particularly impressed by the attention to detail with features such as “black leather vinyl” and “approximately a zillion brass rivets.”

But that’s getting down to brass upholstery tacks.

I’m seriously disappointed by the vinyl, however. The keyboard is fantastic, but for 14K I do not expect vinyl.

I’d be happier with real leather too. On the other hand, pleather might have been the safer choice given that some potential buyers may object to animal products.

I’ve passed the acoustic-remote-control idea to Datamancer, so if it appears in a future build folks may or may not get a hint about my other identities.

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