A Chinese typewriter is a

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

that can type

Chinese script Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...

. Early European typewriters began appearing in the early 19th century. However, as the

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...

uses a

logographic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...

writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...

, fitting thousands of Chinese characters on the machine needed much more complex engineering than typewriters using a simple

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

, or other non-logographic scripts. An ordinary Chinese printing office uses 6,000 Chinese characters. Chinese typewriters, and similar

Japanese typewriter The first practical was invented by Kyota Sugimoto in 1915. Out of the thousands of kanji characters, Kyota's original typewriter used 2,400 of them. He obtained the patent rights to the typewriter that he invented in 1929. Sugimoto's typewrite ...

s invented by

Kyota Sugimoto was a Japanese inventor who developed the first practical Japanese typewriter. He received the Blue Ribbon Award and the Small Asahi Ribbon. Out of the thousands of kanji characters, Sugimoto's typewriter used 2,400 of them. Biography Kyota ...

, which use

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

adopted from the Chinese writing system, started to appear only in the early 20th century. There have been at least five dozen versions of Chinese typewriters, ranging from sizable mechanical models to sophisticated electric

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

Hou-Kun Chow Tong-Zhi typewriter

Hou-Kun Chow (), a mechanical engineer in Shanghai, is credited with inventing the first Chinese typewriter in 1916. His typewriter typed 4,000 characters. He had studied in the United States like several other Chinese who also contributed to the development of Chinese typewriters. Chow first thought about the practicality of a Chinese typewriter in Boston, while he was inspecting American typewriters as a student of the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. His efforts were initially hindered by a lack of technical assistance in Shanghai. Chow considered it impossible to build a Chinese typewriter with a separate key for each Chinese character. Instead, his design used a revolving cylinder containing the characters. They were ordered by radicals and number of

strokes A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

on the cylinder, like a

Chinese dictionary Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Han dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for the Chinese language, and this article discusses some of ...

. This design however proved heavy, the machine initially weighing and an improved version about . Chow expected his typewriter to be used in Chinese offices where multiple copies of documents would have to be made, and by Chinese living in foreign countries without access to skilled writers of Chinese.

IBM's Electric Chinese Typewriter

On June 28, 1944, Kao Chung-Chin, an inventor at IBM, filed for a patent with the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...

, and on December 17, 1946 was issued patent number 2412777A for his invention. Chung-Chin's typewriter employed 36 keys, divided across four banks. The first bank had six keys numbered 0 through 5, and the three other banks each had 10 keys numbered 0 through 9. In order to type a character, the operator was required to simultaneously select one key from each of the four banks. Each of those four-digit combinations corresponded to one of 5,400 Chinese characters, or other symbols such as punctuation marks, which were etched onto the surface of a revolving drum inside the typewriter. The drum had a diameter of 7 inches, a length of 11 inches, and made a complete revolution once per second, allowing for the operator to achieve a maximum

typing speed Words per minute, commonly abbreviated wpm (sometimes uppercased WPM), is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of the speed of typing, reading or Morse code sending and receiving. Alphanumeric entry Since words ...

of 45 words per minute.

''Wanneng'' and ''Double Pigeon'' typewriters

Chinese typewriters made in Japan entered the market in the 1920s, with the ''Wanneng'' () brand, introduced by the Nippon Typewriter Company in 1940 during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

, becoming the ''de facto'' standard. After Japan's defeat and the subsequent nationalization of typewriter companies by the Communist government, locally made models based on the ''Wanneng'' continued to dominate the market, particularly the ''Double Pigeon'' ().

Ming Kwai typewriter

The Ming Kwai typewriter is an

electromechanical typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selective ...

invented and patented by

Lin Yutang Lin Yutang ( ; October 10, 1895 – March 26, 1976) was a Chinese inventor, linguist, novelist, philosopher, and translator. His informal but polished style in both Chinese and English made him one of the most influential writers of his generati ...

. The patent, No. 2613795, was filed on April 17, 1946 by Lin, and was issued by the

on October 14, 1952. One of Lin's intentions was to help modernize China. Lin called his design the "Ming Kwai" typewriter and promoted it as "The Only Chinese Typewriter Designed for Everybody's Use". The two Chinese characters "Ming kwai" () means "clear" (as in understandable) and "quick". Lin had a prototype machine custom built by the Carl E. Krum Company, a small engineering-design consulting firm with an office in New York City. That multilingual typewriter was the size of a conventional office typewriter of the 1940s. It measured . The typefaces fit on a drum. A "magic eye" was mounted in the center of the keyboard which magnifies and allows the typist to review a selected character. Characters are selected by first pressing two keys to choose a desired character which is arranged according to a system Lin devised for his dictionary of the Chinese language. The selected Chinese character appeared in the magic eye for preview, the typist then pressed a "master" key, similar to today's computer

function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, function ...

. The typewriter could create 90,000 distinct characters using either one or two of six character-containing rollers, which in combination has 7000 full characters and 1,400 character radicals or partial characters. The inspired aspect of the typewriter was the system Lin devised for a Chinese script. It had thirty geometric shapes or strokes (somewhat analogous to the elements of a

glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...

). These became "letters" by which to alphabetize Chinese characters. He broke tradition with the long-standing system of radicals and

stroke order Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese ...

writing and categorizing of Chinese characters, inventing a new way of seeing and categorizing. The typewriter was not produced commercially. According to Lin's daughter,

Lin Tai-Yi Lin Tai-yi (; April 1, 1926 – July 2003) was a Chinese-American writer and translator. She was also known as Anor Lin or Lin Wu-Shuang. The daughter of Lin Yutang, she was born in Beijing and came to the United States with her family when ...

, the day she was to demonstrate the machine to executives of the

Remington Typewriter Company E. Remington and Sons (1816–1896) was a manufacturer of firearms and typewriters. Founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, on March 1, 1873, it became known for manufacturing the first commercial typewriter. History The ...

, they could not make it work. Although they did get the machine fixed for a press conference the next day, it was to no avail. Lin found himself deeply in debt. In 1947, Lin paid income taxes owed to the

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory ta ...

and went to work in Paris for

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

Cultural and technological impact

Between the 1930s and 1950s, Chinese typewriters had a political implication, as they were used in mass-production of leaflets and pamphlets. The typewriters also gained popular appeal and changed Chinese office work. According to Thomas Mullaney, it is possible that development of modern Chinese typewriters in the 1960s and 1970s influenced the development of modern computer word processors and even affected the development of computers themselves. In the 1950s, typists came to rearrange the character layout from the standard dictionary layout to groups of common words and phrases. Chinese typewriter engineers were trying to make the most common characters be accessible at the fastest speed possible by

word prediction Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab ...

, a technique used today in

Chinese input methods for computers Chinese input methods are methods that allow a computer user to input Chinese characters. Most, if not all, Chinese input methods fall into one of two categories: phonetic readings or root shapes. Methods under the phonetic category usually are e ...

, as well as in text messaging in many languages. This arrangement was called the ''lianxiang'' (“connected thought”) layout, similar to

predictive text Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the Telephone keypad, numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather ...

and sped typing speeds from about 20 words per minute to around 80. Chinese typewriter has become a metaphor for absurdity, complexity and backwardness in Western popular culture. One such example is

MC Hammer Stanley Kirk Burrell (born March 30, 1962), better known by his stage name MC Hammer (or simply Hammer), is an American rapper, dancer, record producer and entrepreneur. He is known for hit songs such as "U Can't Touch This", "2 Legit 2 Quit" ...

's dance move named after the Chinese typewriter in the music video for "

U Can't Touch This "U Can't Touch This" is a song co-written, produced, and performed by American rapper MC Hammer. It was released as the third single from his third album, ''Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em'' (1990), and has been considered his signature song. Along ...

". The move, with its fast paced and large gestures, supposedly resembles a person working on a huge, complex typewriter. The Chinese typewriter was ultimately eclipsed and made redundant with the introduction of computerised word processing, pioneered by engineer and

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established Political system, political or Organized religion, religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and ...

Wan Runnan Wan Runnan (; born 29 October 1946 in Yixing, Jiangsu) is a Software engineer, Entrepreneur and a Chinese human rights activist who is known for his involvement in the Chinese democracy movement. Life Wan was in college studying engineering w ...

and his partners when they formed

Stone Emerging Industries Company In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its Chemical compound, chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks ...

() in 1984 in

Zhongguancun Zhongguancun () is a major technology hub in Haidian District, Beijing, China. Zhongguancun occupies a band between the northwestern Third Ring Road and the northwestern Fourth Ring Road, in the northwestern part of Beijing. Zhongguancun is ...

, China's "Silicon Valley". The last Chinese typewriters were completed around 1991. Stone developed software based on

Alps Electric is a Japanese multinational corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, producing electronic devices, including switches, potentiometers, sensors, encoders and touchpads. The company was established in 1948 as Kataoka Electric Co., Ltd. and ch ...

custom made 8088 based hardware with a

Brother Industries is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational electronics and electrical equipment company headquartered in Nagoya, Japan. Its products include Printer (computing), printers, multifunction printers, desktop computers, sewing machin ...

dot matrix printer A dot matrix printer is an impact printer that prints using a fixed number of pins or wires. Typically the pins or wires are arranged in one or several vertical columns. The pins strike an ink-coated ribbon and force contact between the ribbon ...

, distributed by

Mitsui is one of the largest '' keiretsu'' in Japan and one of the largest corporate groups in the world. The major companies of the group include Mitsui & Co. ( general trading company), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nippon Paper Industri ...

, to print Chinese characters and released the system as the MS-2400.

Notes

References

* Bliven, Bruce Jr. ''The Wonderful Writing Machine''. New York: Random House, 1954. * Chinese Typewriter: A Real Character Study", ''

Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

'' (August 30, 1947), p. 16. * Lin, Tai-Yi. "My Father, Lin Yutang", ''

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...

'' (December 1990) p:161-191. * Lin, Yutang, ''

Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage ''Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage'', compiled by the linguist and author Lin Yutang, contains over 8,100 character head entries and 110,000 words and phrases, including many neologisms. Lin's dictionary made two lexicograp ...

''. Hong Kong:

The Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public research university in Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong, formally established in 1963 by a charter granted by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It is the territory's second-oldest university and ...

, 1972. * Tsu, Jing. "Lin Yutang's Typewriter." In ''Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora''. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...

, 2010, pp. 49–79.

External links

Chinese Typewriter

Language Log ''Language Log'' is a collaborative language blog maintained by Mark Liberman, a phonetician at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of the posts focus on language use in the media and in popular culture. Text available through Google Search fr ...

Chinese Typewriter, part2
Language Log
Chinese Typewriter
Thomas Mullaney
How it Works: The Chinese Typewriter

Wired (magazine) ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fr ...

History of a "Scribal Machine"

The Harvard Gazette Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(April 2, 2009) {{Portal bar, China Chinese orthography Han character input Text Typewriters