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The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age
The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing.
A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer , Thomas Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day.
Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, showing the development of electronic Chinese input methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way, Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM, MIT, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Taiwanese military, and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese establishment, to name a few, and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese language computing. Finally, he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases, enabling it to achieve a meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe.
An eminently engaging and artfully told history, The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture informs computing and how computing, in turn, shapes culture.
A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer , Thomas Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day.
Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, showing the development of electronic Chinese input methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way, Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM, MIT, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Taiwanese military, and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese establishment, to name a few, and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese language computing. Finally, he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases, enabling it to achieve a meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe.
An eminently engaging and artfully told history, The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture informs computing and how computing, in turn, shapes culture.
359 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2024
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2107 people want to read
About the author
Thomas S. Mullaney
9 books52 followersThomas S. Mullaney is Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 20, 2024
A fascinating book looking at the history of the Chinese Computer, or attempts to enable the input and display of Chinese characters in the early days of computers. Now known as IMEs (input method editors), it was not a given that the most popular method now used for Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin, would be the dominant one, nor that it is now so efficient that is can rival, or even exceed, the speed of entering words using Latin alphabets. Early IMEs used numeric coding, codes based on the structure of Chinese characters, and other methods which might have become dominant. But Hanyu Pinyin would win in the end due to politics and an advantage, compared to other methods, at entering multiple characters.
What follows is a chapter by chapter summary of the book.
"1: When IMEs Were Women: IBM, Lois Lew, and the Dawn of Electronic Chinese" looks at the history of one of the first Chinese entry systems used. It uses four-digit codes to represent the most popular Chinese characters and the ability of a typist to memorize the codes and enter them to generate the words. This was based on the telegraph system which also uses four-digit codes for Chinese characters, so it was possible for a typist to memorize most of them. And a Chinese woman, Lois Lew, would become the main person to demonstrate this ability in demonstrations by the inventor of the input method.
"2: Breaking the Spell: Sinotype and the Invention of Autocompletion" covers entry system based on the characteristics of Chinese characters. These break down Chinese characters into subcharacters and strokes and assigned to certain keys. These keys were then entered in combination to reproduce the Chinese character. Efficiency in entering characters was by arranging for the most often used strokes to be most easily accessible. More efficiency by achieve by allowing Chinese characters to be selected based on a minimum set of key entries that uniquely identify it. This was, essentially, a form of word prediction and autocorrecting. A display would show the selected character to the typist for confirmation before it was finally entered.
"3: Farewell, QWERTY: The Quest for a Chinese Keyboard" covers the period when non-Qwerty keyboards were used to input Chinese characters. At this time, many keyboards were proposed, all with hundreds of keys, with different ways of mapping a combination of keys to each Chinese character.
"4: The Input Wars: Zhi Bingyi and the Return of Hypography" covers the rise of minicomputers and microcomputers used in China, usually ones imported from the West. This gave new impetus to entering Chinese character entry using a Qwerty keyboard. It covers various schemes for generating characters based on various input schemes. Many were proposed during this period, but only a few made it to market, as they needed to work with the manufacturers of the computers to implement them.
"5: The Search for Modding China: Printers, Screens, and the Politics of Peripherals" looks at the microcomputer era with the introduction of Apple II and IBM-PC like computers. These microcomputers came with peripherals, like monitors and printers, pose new challenges to producing Chinese characters. Made for Western alphabets, they lack the resolution or ability to show or print Chinese characters. It was the rise of modders and hackers who worked to modify printer hardware to make them produce Chinese characters. Operating systems also had to be hacked or modified to handle Chinese input systems, and to display and print Chinese characters. These changes propagated back to manufacturers of the operating system, leading to the rise of 'international' operating systems that have the built-in ability to display Chinese characters and other languages.
"6: Connected Thoughts: Chinese in the Age of Predictive Text" covers the rise of Hanyu Pinyin as the most used input system today. Compared to other Chinese input systems at the time, it was less efficient at entering individual Chinese characters. But Hanyu Pinyin overcomes this due to the capabilities of modern computers for predicting input, allowing computers to quickly enter well-known multi character phrases faster than other input methods that were optimized for generating single characters. Multiple domain specific databases of Chinese characters also allowed Hanyu Pinyin to quickly produce output for specific purposes. It also didn't hurt that the Chinese Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin as an alternative writing method to traditional Chinese characters.
The book ends will a note that even today, people are still inventing input systems for Chinese and other non-alphabetic written languages. Globally, computers with such input systems now outnumber Western style entry systems (one key for each character). Now, with AI chatbots, one-letter-per-key entry systems may even see a decline in the future, as people now use chatbots to enter words on their behalf based on a prompt.
What follows is a chapter by chapter summary of the book.
"1: When IMEs Were Women: IBM, Lois Lew, and the Dawn of Electronic Chinese" looks at the history of one of the first Chinese entry systems used. It uses four-digit codes to represent the most popular Chinese characters and the ability of a typist to memorize the codes and enter them to generate the words. This was based on the telegraph system which also uses four-digit codes for Chinese characters, so it was possible for a typist to memorize most of them. And a Chinese woman, Lois Lew, would become the main person to demonstrate this ability in demonstrations by the inventor of the input method.
"2: Breaking the Spell: Sinotype and the Invention of Autocompletion" covers entry system based on the characteristics of Chinese characters. These break down Chinese characters into subcharacters and strokes and assigned to certain keys. These keys were then entered in combination to reproduce the Chinese character. Efficiency in entering characters was by arranging for the most often used strokes to be most easily accessible. More efficiency by achieve by allowing Chinese characters to be selected based on a minimum set of key entries that uniquely identify it. This was, essentially, a form of word prediction and autocorrecting. A display would show the selected character to the typist for confirmation before it was finally entered.
"3: Farewell, QWERTY: The Quest for a Chinese Keyboard" covers the period when non-Qwerty keyboards were used to input Chinese characters. At this time, many keyboards were proposed, all with hundreds of keys, with different ways of mapping a combination of keys to each Chinese character.
"4: The Input Wars: Zhi Bingyi and the Return of Hypography" covers the rise of minicomputers and microcomputers used in China, usually ones imported from the West. This gave new impetus to entering Chinese character entry using a Qwerty keyboard. It covers various schemes for generating characters based on various input schemes. Many were proposed during this period, but only a few made it to market, as they needed to work with the manufacturers of the computers to implement them.
"5: The Search for Modding China: Printers, Screens, and the Politics of Peripherals" looks at the microcomputer era with the introduction of Apple II and IBM-PC like computers. These microcomputers came with peripherals, like monitors and printers, pose new challenges to producing Chinese characters. Made for Western alphabets, they lack the resolution or ability to show or print Chinese characters. It was the rise of modders and hackers who worked to modify printer hardware to make them produce Chinese characters. Operating systems also had to be hacked or modified to handle Chinese input systems, and to display and print Chinese characters. These changes propagated back to manufacturers of the operating system, leading to the rise of 'international' operating systems that have the built-in ability to display Chinese characters and other languages.
"6: Connected Thoughts: Chinese in the Age of Predictive Text" covers the rise of Hanyu Pinyin as the most used input system today. Compared to other Chinese input systems at the time, it was less efficient at entering individual Chinese characters. But Hanyu Pinyin overcomes this due to the capabilities of modern computers for predicting input, allowing computers to quickly enter well-known multi character phrases faster than other input methods that were optimized for generating single characters. Multiple domain specific databases of Chinese characters also allowed Hanyu Pinyin to quickly produce output for specific purposes. It also didn't hurt that the Chinese Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin as an alternative writing method to traditional Chinese characters.
The book ends will a note that even today, people are still inventing input systems for Chinese and other non-alphabetic written languages. Globally, computers with such input systems now outnumber Western style entry systems (one key for each character). Now, with AI chatbots, one-letter-per-key entry systems may even see a decline in the future, as people now use chatbots to enter words on their behalf based on a prompt.
November 6, 2024
The promised sequel to Mullaney's Chinese Typewriter is as fascinating if not quite exciting, possibly because the ideas here are more an extension of the previous, and also because so much of this book boils down to quite specific code issues. Nevertheless there are moments and chapters of absolute wonder, not least the chapter on how Chinese coders went about modding early ASCII based Western microcomputers to take Chinese characters when each character took up at least six times the memory of a ASCII one, and there being thousands of them. Also because this recent history there is some nice first hand testimony from the code typists of the fifties, though it seems that more recent pioneers have been a little hidden by the Chinese government. But yet again continues a groundbreaking way to look at language.
August 5, 2025
Not as good as the first one. In fact, much worse, if I have to be honest. The author is so verbose... Why do you want to include all the historical details in a book? Not that they are even relevant to the topic of the book. If you are interested in Chinese typewriters or the way Chinese people type, just read the first book and skip this one.
May 31, 2024
You should read this + if you live within ~50 miles of me and want to borrow my uncorrected page proof you are welcome to it
August 19, 2024
I’ve actually worked in the exact area of Chinese input methods, and studied Chinese for a long time, so to start with I’m clearly quite biased toward loving this book.
But! I would highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in Chinese, computing, or both. Having read Mullaney’s previous book on the history of the typewriter (and having taken about two weeks of a course he tonight back in 2010 on Chinese history before I unfortunately had to drop it due to a timing conflict!), I knew going into this to expect an impressively well-written, well-researched account with equal parts good storytelling and good handling of the material.
What I didn’t expect was how well he would capture the complex and difficult to explain mechanics of Chinese computing. I worked in this field for a number of years as a programmer, and know this material quite well from a technical and linguistic perspective, but honestly this is the best and most accurate account of this material I have seen. Moreover, despite what would in other authors hands be dry, technical material, Mullaney explains all of this clearly and honestly, beautifully. Furthermore, I would imagine this book would be very accessible to someone who either didn’t know much about the computing specifics, Chinese, or both.
All of this is to say, on the surface this appears to be a rather niche book, but in practice, it has a lot to say about the way power is distributed vis-a-vis technology and the way computers have developed in our world to match. It says a lot about Chinese history, and has a number of interesting characters who emerge from its pages. And it says a lot about the will to solve problems when the deck is stacked against you. Truly a fascinating portrayal, more than a decade in the making (!!), which Telly a good story and tells it well.
But! I would highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in Chinese, computing, or both. Having read Mullaney’s previous book on the history of the typewriter (and having taken about two weeks of a course he tonight back in 2010 on Chinese history before I unfortunately had to drop it due to a timing conflict!), I knew going into this to expect an impressively well-written, well-researched account with equal parts good storytelling and good handling of the material.
What I didn’t expect was how well he would capture the complex and difficult to explain mechanics of Chinese computing. I worked in this field for a number of years as a programmer, and know this material quite well from a technical and linguistic perspective, but honestly this is the best and most accurate account of this material I have seen. Moreover, despite what would in other authors hands be dry, technical material, Mullaney explains all of this clearly and honestly, beautifully. Furthermore, I would imagine this book would be very accessible to someone who either didn’t know much about the computing specifics, Chinese, or both.
All of this is to say, on the surface this appears to be a rather niche book, but in practice, it has a lot to say about the way power is distributed vis-a-vis technology and the way computers have developed in our world to match. It says a lot about Chinese history, and has a number of interesting characters who emerge from its pages. And it says a lot about the will to solve problems when the deck is stacked against you. Truly a fascinating portrayal, more than a decade in the making (!!), which Telly a good story and tells it well.
January 30, 2025
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It’s the most interesting and unique book I’ve read in quite some time. I should note that I grew up as a teenager in the 1980s learning Mandarin and watching computers evolve, then have tried to decipher various Asian languages for the past 20 years. But I never stopped to think hard about how Mandarin Chinese got to be usable in computers.
For me, the book’s combination of linguistics, character decomposition, creativity of engineers, and just-detailed-enough computer science was absolutely ideal. But for anyone else who is curious to read a reasonably short 230 pages (if you exclude the footnotes), you are in for an absolute treat.
For me, the book’s combination of linguistics, character decomposition, creativity of engineers, and just-detailed-enough computer science was absolutely ideal. But for anyone else who is curious to read a reasonably short 230 pages (if you exclude the footnotes), you are in for an absolute treat.
June 11, 2024
The online media-censorships incl disallowing speaking/typing the full words/phrases, deleting online comments, disabling of comments, shutting down online forums, and no-show of full live search results have caused the amnesia of characters, not the so called term ‘hypography’. Once you control people’s memories you control the empire, through symbols and narratives’ manipulations.
The observation of typing-by-first letter only proves human nervous system’s powerful reconstructive/self-healing mechanism which lays right inside of each human. And gyri could easily rebuild new paths to make new habits work smoothly. Of course it also narrows people’s view if they continue not using pens and pencils to write and relying more on AI’s thinking-for-humans techs. Yet the caetextia (not just in ADHD) - the loss of context is strictly tied to the control of the memories under disguises of ‘governmental safety’ purposes, and that, is the main reason. The author has obviously lost the focal point and explained it without clarity but absurdity.
The observation of typing-by-first letter only proves human nervous system’s powerful reconstructive/self-healing mechanism which lays right inside of each human. And gyri could easily rebuild new paths to make new habits work smoothly. Of course it also narrows people’s view if they continue not using pens and pencils to write and relying more on AI’s thinking-for-humans techs. Yet the caetextia (not just in ADHD) - the loss of context is strictly tied to the control of the memories under disguises of ‘governmental safety’ purposes, and that, is the main reason. The author has obviously lost the focal point and explained it without clarity but absurdity.
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May 17, 2025NBN.
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December 19, 2025Explained at a very rudimentary level. Not that it's a bad thing but not for me.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews