On the topic of using things beyond their intended purpose: kitchen scale + 3D printer = force gauge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBrPYYRMYM

100,000 units sold, software royalty of $7.50 a unit -- I make that a little over $2M in today's money. Not bad for what seems to have been about two months work.

I stumbled across the article about the ThunderScan in about 2012 when looking for info about ImageWriter II upgrades, and have been slightly obsessed ever since. It's such a brilliant idea - a higher resolution scanner, that was far lower in cost than its competitors, achieved by reusing the paper transport that most customers already had.

I'm lucky enough to own two working ThunderScans now (and one third one that I needed the software driver from). They work exactly as advertised, and it's a joy to see them zip across the page, digitising line by line.

The software by Hertzfeld is another joy to use. The scrolling, which Hertzfeld calls "inertial scrolling" in that article, is now familiar to us all who have used touchscreen devices. It's funny to think that the feature that wowed so many at the 2007 iPhone launch actually existed all the way back in 1984, designed by one of the key creators of the Macintosh.

I wish there were more creative hacks like this - I just know that if a company tried to do something similar today, the printer manufacturer would instantly roll out an update to break this functionality.