Back in 2021, Lego released a beautiful typewriter set. Like Lego official sitethe set is based on the actual real-life machine used in the 1950s by the company’s founder, and it remains an incredibly beautiful piece of design—you can feed a real sheet of paper through rollers, its carriage moves as you type, and each key press triggers a lever that strikes an individual letter on a ribbon. The set is discontinued, although you can still get it Bricklink for less than $200.

But there is one thing with Lego’s typewriter nothing to do: it’s not really, you know, typing. The ribbon is a piece of uninked fabric, and the letter blocks are simply 2 × 1 Lego bricks. For all its cleverness, the set is ornamental.

YouTuber Koenkun Brick planning to do one better. In a new video on his channel, he recounts the construction of his own Lego typewriter—which, unlike the original, actually produces letters on paper. Well, OK, not an actual paper. If anything, the Koenkun Bricks typewriter is more ingenious—it takes 1×1 round Lego tiles, each decorated with a letter of the alphabet, and slaps them on a scrolling sheet of white Lego plates.

The Rube Goldberg-esque contortions into which the Koenkun Bricks design bends make it something to behold. Instead of connecting directly to a lever that presses a letter onto a ribbon, each key on this typewriter instead triggers three separate mechanisms: one to release a letter tile, one to move the carriage into place, and one to force the tile onto the “paper.”

The first mechanism pushes a lever that slides a tile from under one of 26 separate storage bins mounted on top of the device. From there, the tile travels down a ramp and rests on a flat shelf right in front of the paper. Releasing the key releases this lever, allowing another letter tile to slide into place, ready for the next letter to be typed.

The movement of the carriage is achieved by a mechanism behind the device. The entire carriage is crumpled by a rubber band, and its left side runs against a series of loose 1×1 headlight blocks in a narrow race. Each key press releases one of these blocks, allowing the carriage to slide the width of one stud to the left; the rubber pulls the carriage to this position.

Wisely, while the first two mechanisms are triggered by pressing a letter key, the third is fired when the key is released, giving the letter tile time to slide into position. Pressing the key activates this mechanism, which draws the lever responsible for pushing the tile into place again like the arm of a catapult. When the key is released, a rubber band pulls the mechanism back into place, providing the necessary force to “type” the letter.

There are obvious limitations—despite trying a mechanism that automatically reloads distance blocks, Koenkun Bricks leaves it as unreliable, so it must be replaced manually after each line is typed. The paper also has to be scrolled by hand. But these are minor quibbles—after all, this is a freaking Lego typewriter that actually types. Koenkun Bricks ends his video by using it, typing a rather touching missive to the Lego design team. “Dear Lego team,” he wrote, “your toys fill my days with limitless creativity.” And indeed, he is not the only one—Lego continues to inspire and motivate all the way on incredible madness. It would take a long time to improve.