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The Chinese Typewriter: A History
Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters -- in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter.
The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of "predictive text."
Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.
The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of "predictive text."
Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.
481 pages, Hardcover
First published August 8, 2017
55 people are currently reading
1011 people want to read
About the author
Thomas S. Mullaney
9 books51 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 - 30 of 56 reviews
March 7, 2018
A fascinating book that looks at the history of typing Chinese characters. In the modern computer era, we are all used to seeing a standard computer keyboard that is able to produce various characters, from the Latin alphabet to Chinese/Japanese/Korean or other languages. But before computers, there was an era where mechanical typewriters would need produce characters in non-Latin languages and this book covers that in great detail.
The first chapter looks at how the 'myth' of a huge, chinese typewriter with thousands of keys (that never existed) came to be. To tell that tale, the author steps back a pace and starts with looking at how the current form of the mechanical typewriter (with a fixed numbers of keys and a shift mechanism) came to be and why alternative types of typewriters fell out of contention. He then shows how various non-English scripts (like Thai, Arabic and various European languages) were modified and mangled to fit the typewriter (for typewriters were mass-manufactured to a single, fixed set of keys). The only mechanical changes allowed were to cater for right-to-left scripts (like Arabic and Hebrew) and to accommodate no-space and variable spacing between characters. With no leeway to increase the number of keys, it would be obvious that Chinese (with its thousands of characters) would never be accommodated, leading to the rise of the mythical Chinese typewriter with thousands of keys. It was also a way to imply that Chinese characters were more 'primitive' and could not be used in a 'modern' and 'progressive' society as embodied by the technology of a typewriter.
The second chapter looks at the puzzle that the Chinese characters present to printing (with a printing press) and the telegraph. Three approaches were tried. The first is to create a collection of the most commonly used Chinese characters, enough to print out the majority of books in Chinese. The second approach is to 'break up' as many Chinese characters as possible in 'sub-modules' of characters that can be recombined to produce any Chinese character. The third is to bypass the problem of reproducing Chinese characters at all; instead, each (or most) characters are represented as a number that is transmitted and it is up to the sender and receiver to agree on a common number to represent each character. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages and serves as an introduction into the next chapter, the creation of an actual Chinese typewriter.
The third chapter looks at early attempts to create a real Chinese typewriter, both by Chinese who went to the West looking for opportunities to introduce technology to a modernising China and settled on the creation of a typewriter. The first one was an attempt to use only the most common Chinese characters and aimed at the masses. The second one was also a creation that used the most common Chinese characters but included options to combine radicals to create other characters. While prototypes of both (and a few other machines briefly mentioned here) existed at one point, they were ultimately never mass-produced.
Chapter four finally looks at a mass-produced Chinese typewriter. This was a flatbed type design with several thousand characters and a separate tray holding additional characters that can be added to empty spaces. Besides the design, the author also looks at the culture that developed around it, including the culture of promoting 'typing girls' in promotional and news material around the typewriter, despite men forming a significant minority of typist for the Chinese typewriter. There is some notes that this may be influenced by western depictions of typist, which do consist of mainly women. The art of learning to use the typewriter, developing the muscle memory needed to quickly select character after character is discussed in this chapter. An abortive attempt to release a Chinese typewriter without Chinese characters (it was an attempt by Chinese educationalist to simplify the system by promoting simple individual characters) is also covered here.
Chapter five switches to the development of Japanese typewriters. Two types were in use: one that handles Japanese kana characters (and relatively easy to develop as there were a limited number of characters) and one for kanji, similar to Chinese characters. The similarity of Kanji to Chinese would enable the Japanese manufacturers to enter the Chinese market and begin to dominate it. Chinese typewriter makers attempted to compete with either local designs or ones (quietly) copied from the Japanese. But World War II would change matters, causing Japanese typewriters to dominate the Chinese marketplace.
Chapter six starts with a diversion into the present, showing how the CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) input system works on current computers: it requires the user to enter two or more key presses to generate a Chinese character. Once this is understood by the reader, the author then quickly goes through the history of attempts to categorise Chinese characters for quicker searching and indexing. He then introduces a mechanical marvel: a Chinese typewriter that implements a mechanical version of the modern-day CJK system to produce Chinese characters. But for political turmoil in China (the takeover by the Communists), this might have become a widely manufactured typewriter system.
Chapter seven shows the growth of Chinese typewriters. But with that growth comes pressure to increase the typing speed. This, the author says, would lead to an early form of predictive input. Users would discard the approach of arranging the characters on the typewriter by a 'logical' pattern (the type of strokes, for example) but instead would group characters by usage, keeping often used characters close to each other. Using such methods, typists would boost the amount of characters they can produce to keep up with the needs of the state for typed documents.
It is here that the book ends. The next book, the author promises, would cover the advancement of typing Chinese into the computer era.
The first chapter looks at how the 'myth' of a huge, chinese typewriter with thousands of keys (that never existed) came to be. To tell that tale, the author steps back a pace and starts with looking at how the current form of the mechanical typewriter (with a fixed numbers of keys and a shift mechanism) came to be and why alternative types of typewriters fell out of contention. He then shows how various non-English scripts (like Thai, Arabic and various European languages) were modified and mangled to fit the typewriter (for typewriters were mass-manufactured to a single, fixed set of keys). The only mechanical changes allowed were to cater for right-to-left scripts (like Arabic and Hebrew) and to accommodate no-space and variable spacing between characters. With no leeway to increase the number of keys, it would be obvious that Chinese (with its thousands of characters) would never be accommodated, leading to the rise of the mythical Chinese typewriter with thousands of keys. It was also a way to imply that Chinese characters were more 'primitive' and could not be used in a 'modern' and 'progressive' society as embodied by the technology of a typewriter.
The second chapter looks at the puzzle that the Chinese characters present to printing (with a printing press) and the telegraph. Three approaches were tried. The first is to create a collection of the most commonly used Chinese characters, enough to print out the majority of books in Chinese. The second approach is to 'break up' as many Chinese characters as possible in 'sub-modules' of characters that can be recombined to produce any Chinese character. The third is to bypass the problem of reproducing Chinese characters at all; instead, each (or most) characters are represented as a number that is transmitted and it is up to the sender and receiver to agree on a common number to represent each character. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages and serves as an introduction into the next chapter, the creation of an actual Chinese typewriter.
The third chapter looks at early attempts to create a real Chinese typewriter, both by Chinese who went to the West looking for opportunities to introduce technology to a modernising China and settled on the creation of a typewriter. The first one was an attempt to use only the most common Chinese characters and aimed at the masses. The second one was also a creation that used the most common Chinese characters but included options to combine radicals to create other characters. While prototypes of both (and a few other machines briefly mentioned here) existed at one point, they were ultimately never mass-produced.
Chapter four finally looks at a mass-produced Chinese typewriter. This was a flatbed type design with several thousand characters and a separate tray holding additional characters that can be added to empty spaces. Besides the design, the author also looks at the culture that developed around it, including the culture of promoting 'typing girls' in promotional and news material around the typewriter, despite men forming a significant minority of typist for the Chinese typewriter. There is some notes that this may be influenced by western depictions of typist, which do consist of mainly women. The art of learning to use the typewriter, developing the muscle memory needed to quickly select character after character is discussed in this chapter. An abortive attempt to release a Chinese typewriter without Chinese characters (it was an attempt by Chinese educationalist to simplify the system by promoting simple individual characters) is also covered here.
Chapter five switches to the development of Japanese typewriters. Two types were in use: one that handles Japanese kana characters (and relatively easy to develop as there were a limited number of characters) and one for kanji, similar to Chinese characters. The similarity of Kanji to Chinese would enable the Japanese manufacturers to enter the Chinese market and begin to dominate it. Chinese typewriter makers attempted to compete with either local designs or ones (quietly) copied from the Japanese. But World War II would change matters, causing Japanese typewriters to dominate the Chinese marketplace.
Chapter six starts with a diversion into the present, showing how the CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) input system works on current computers: it requires the user to enter two or more key presses to generate a Chinese character. Once this is understood by the reader, the author then quickly goes through the history of attempts to categorise Chinese characters for quicker searching and indexing. He then introduces a mechanical marvel: a Chinese typewriter that implements a mechanical version of the modern-day CJK system to produce Chinese characters. But for political turmoil in China (the takeover by the Communists), this might have become a widely manufactured typewriter system.
Chapter seven shows the growth of Chinese typewriters. But with that growth comes pressure to increase the typing speed. This, the author says, would lead to an early form of predictive input. Users would discard the approach of arranging the characters on the typewriter by a 'logical' pattern (the type of strokes, for example) but instead would group characters by usage, keeping often used characters close to each other. Using such methods, typists would boost the amount of characters they can produce to keep up with the needs of the state for typed documents.
It is here that the book ends. The next book, the author promises, would cover the advancement of typing Chinese into the computer era.
October 2, 2017
A very broad treatment that ranges from from Western perceptions of Chinese backwardness to the details of various methods for generation Chinese characters on a smartphone, the book covers the concept of the Chinese typewriter as racist joke (it was apparently a common topic for cartoonists at the tail end of the 19th C), its relation to other technologies such as typesetting, various language reform schemes and of course the technology itself. It's also surprisingly readable for a book this crunchy. This is probably my favorite "history of an object."
November 24, 2017
Quite interesting. Yet it's not a definitive wrap up of the question. The author planned...a sequel, taking us all the way from the XIXth century to the brink of new era and a typewriter shape we all are quite used to, but abandoning the story at that faithful moment, leaving us still with a cumbersome 2000-3000 character slow device, about to be substituted with the conventional (for us, and breakthrough for the Chinese) specimen. Arrgh! :D What a teaser of 500+ pages!
January 25, 2019
“What is Morse code without letters ? What is a typewriter without keys? What is a computer where what you type is not what you get? ”
An excellent book that helps me to see the technological materiality that makes my/our thinking possible. Quite unexpected introduction to the STS studies...
An excellent book that helps me to see the technological materiality that makes my/our thinking possible. Quite unexpected introduction to the STS studies...
August 4, 2021
This book was rough. I absolutely did learn interesting things about the history of the typewriter and adjacent technologies in China, which was great, but this book was clearly not written for general audiences. I've read a good number of more academic styled books, but this one goes out of it's way to keep it's message inaccessible to general audiences. It breaks every one of Grice's Maxims, the general rules for clear communication, and that leads to a slow, trudging, and absolutely miserable reading experience. One example of this are the maxims of relation and quantity; the author has a habit of listing things that don't contribute any additional insight to reader and don't further clarify the point being made. I would often find myself slogging through a list, for example, of specific individuals who ran Chinese typing schools, thinking, "I wonder when these people will come up again, I should try to remember these names." Not to spoil anything, but they don't. I imagine the author wanted to prove that they really had done the research, which while fine for a journal article or dissertation, is absolutely unnecessary for my purpose of learning about the history of the object. Similarly, the author uses what I suppose must be popular nomenclature for his field rather than plain english terms with the same meaning, e.g. why talk about a typewriter's sound when you wax poetic on it's aurality? Why call something a memory aide in english when you can use the french aide-mémoire? These patterns, along with the author's frequent habit of essentially telling the reader how they should feel about the historical facts being put forth rather than allowing those facts to speak for themselves. While I'm aware that any selection and presentation of facts will always in service of some narrative, this was just often absurdly clumsy and transparent. Also, I'm not sure if there was a concerted effort to make each chapter entirely standalone, but large swaths of argument are repeated several times throughout the book. I'm sure there's a good reason for it, but far too often it felt like the author was consciously wasting their reader's time.
If the author's intent was to produce a reference, just a book with every scrap of information their research uncovered in one place so others researching this topic could leaf through it and drill down through footnotes, then they succeeded. If they were hoping to produce an engaging book for general audiences to learn about the topic, I'd say they failed.
If the author's intent was to produce a reference, just a book with every scrap of information their research uncovered in one place so others researching this topic could leaf through it and drill down through footnotes, then they succeeded. If they were hoping to produce an engaging book for general audiences to learn about the topic, I'd say they failed.
January 20, 2020
The minute I read a review of this in the LRB (about eighteen months ago), I knew this book was for me - the surprising thing being the technolinguistic puzzle at the heart of it is potentially the least interesting thing here. Which is to say that whilst this is primarily an academic book, Mullaney packs it with meaty anthropological asides which partially tell the story of China, of technological development and promising more in a follow up sequel about the Chinese computer. There is nothing more bold after all than spending your first chapter talking purely of Chinese typewriters of the mind, the intriguing thought that might bring anyone to this book, and then telling us off for not only being wrong about the device but being part of a racist and xenophobic tradition going back a 130 years. Oh and we are also wrong about what we think a typewriter its, and how they may work. Three hundred pages later you get to boggle at the invention of a machine that did predictive Chinese texting which was invented in 1948 and was solely mechanical.
Very rarely has non-fiction left me gagging for its sequel (heavily trailed admittedly in the book), and whilst it is written with the rigour of an academic piece, the lightness of touch (and occasional jokes) both reward a deep read and like all good work like this opens your mind to different perspectives. The very act of typing this review where the correspondence between me hitting a key and the letter appearing on screen now not only opens up its mediation, but also is seen to be less efficient than someone doing the same in Mandarin. Invention, ingenuity, the application of hard work plus some meaty linguistic and philosophical thoughts whirl around here and I recommend it highly.
Very rarely has non-fiction left me gagging for its sequel (heavily trailed admittedly in the book), and whilst it is written with the rigour of an academic piece, the lightness of touch (and occasional jokes) both reward a deep read and like all good work like this opens your mind to different perspectives. The very act of typing this review where the correspondence between me hitting a key and the letter appearing on screen now not only opens up its mediation, but also is seen to be less efficient than someone doing the same in Mandarin. Invention, ingenuity, the application of hard work plus some meaty linguistic and philosophical thoughts whirl around here and I recommend it highly.
May 10, 2019
As is usual in such books, the author wastes far too much time debunking the myths and berating Western prejudices. (And may I say, Chinese ignorance of the West was at least as great as Western ignorance of China.). See? I disposed of myths and prejudices in a single paragraph!
The Western typwriter evolved in a direction that was singularly ill suited to Chinese writing. Other languages, like Russian, Hebrew, Arabic and even Siamese were crowbarred into the small keyboard, single shift model. That was not ideal but it allowed for mass production and a great many of the parts were interchangeble between languages. These typewriters were portable and could be operated at great speed, two advantages that the author seldom bothers to mention. And the user could see what she had typed.
But this was not always the case. Before the Remmington typewriter conquered the world (and it did!), there were other kinds of machine that fell by the wayside in English but were better starting points for Chinese. A Chinese REMMINGTON is clearly absurd. But a Chinese TYPEWRITER is another matter.
This should have been a good book, but in the end I couldn't stand the dead-white-male-bashing and the cheap shots againsts easy targets. Tom Selleck is no China scholar? Who knew?
The Western typwriter evolved in a direction that was singularly ill suited to Chinese writing. Other languages, like Russian, Hebrew, Arabic and even Siamese were crowbarred into the small keyboard, single shift model. That was not ideal but it allowed for mass production and a great many of the parts were interchangeble between languages. These typewriters were portable and could be operated at great speed, two advantages that the author seldom bothers to mention. And the user could see what she had typed.
But this was not always the case. Before the Remmington typewriter conquered the world (and it did!), there were other kinds of machine that fell by the wayside in English but were better starting points for Chinese. A Chinese REMMINGTON is clearly absurd. But a Chinese TYPEWRITER is another matter.
This should have been a good book, but in the end I couldn't stand the dead-white-male-bashing and the cheap shots againsts easy targets. Tom Selleck is no China scholar? Who knew?
April 23, 2018
For someone who isn’t pursuing Chinese linguistics in particular, the book seems to be meticulously researched and, frankly speaking, rather boring. However, the facts incite curiosity, propel reading and make up an interesting case study. Still figuring out for what.
March 16, 2022
This is a history not just of certain actual Chinese Typewriters, but the idea of a Chinese typewriter, some context about the development of the international typewriter industry and various developments in Chinese literary techniques such as type setting in publishing and transmitting Chinese in telegraphy. It is an engaging, enthusiastic and expressively told narrative of a set of technical developments that reflected and interacted with various historical and social movements and that resonates with later developments.
One strand brought up is the prejudice and preconceptions the Chinese language faced in the west where the typewriter industry developed. It also discusses how various linguistic reform movements in China motivated and equipped would be typewriter developers, but also the slow development and problems of Chinese typewriter developments motivated those most critical of traditional Chinese writing.
In general I found the narrative of the book convincing. However I thought it was a bit too enthusiastic and focused a bit too much on the exceptional nature of the Chinese script. For example Mullaney emphasizes how arrangements of Chinese typewriters began being built around the frequency of accompanied characters in a way that reflects later techniques of predictive text in Chinese language entry. I thought it would have been worthwhile to connect this to the way alphabetic typewriters have letters arranged based on frequency analysis of letters in a languages word to optimize the keyboard for speed of typing which has in a basic way some of the same considerations. This would also connect his narrative to debates about path dependence in Roman character keyboard design.
The Kindle book generally worked well but two of the chapter end notes were not properly linked and so you could not go to the footnote by simply clicking on the end not number in-line in the text. Also depending on margins etc. a d could be cut off so as to resemble an a etc
One strand brought up is the prejudice and preconceptions the Chinese language faced in the west where the typewriter industry developed. It also discusses how various linguistic reform movements in China motivated and equipped would be typewriter developers, but also the slow development and problems of Chinese typewriter developments motivated those most critical of traditional Chinese writing.
In general I found the narrative of the book convincing. However I thought it was a bit too enthusiastic and focused a bit too much on the exceptional nature of the Chinese script. For example Mullaney emphasizes how arrangements of Chinese typewriters began being built around the frequency of accompanied characters in a way that reflects later techniques of predictive text in Chinese language entry. I thought it would have been worthwhile to connect this to the way alphabetic typewriters have letters arranged based on frequency analysis of letters in a languages word to optimize the keyboard for speed of typing which has in a basic way some of the same considerations. This would also connect his narrative to debates about path dependence in Roman character keyboard design.
The Kindle book generally worked well but two of the chapter end notes were not properly linked and so you could not go to the footnote by simply clicking on the end not number in-line in the text. Also depending on margins etc. a d could be cut off so as to resemble an a etc
May 1, 2018
Seldom do I find a book so closely matched to my quirky personal interests, but this is one. I'm somewhat obsessively interested in information theory, and my life passion is the Chinese language – and this work serves up a deep examination of both.
For anybody who shares these interests, or even has a more casual interest in the Chinese language and/or the history of writing and communications technologies, don't miss this one. I look forward anxiously to the author's follow-up book volume he says in the concluding chapter is currently in progress. Six out of five stars.
For anybody who shares these interests, or even has a more casual interest in the Chinese language and/or the history of writing and communications technologies, don't miss this one. I look forward anxiously to the author's follow-up book volume he says in the concluding chapter is currently in progress. Six out of five stars.
June 12, 2025
From the mechanical genius of memory, search widgets and the actual typing device to the strange fight in the kanjiverse over who will set the standards, this one fun read for nerds. The standards battles continue into the 90s when Unicode crushes all. A strange intersection of invention, culture and politics.
I enjoyed it, but then I love complex widgets
I enjoyed it, but then I love complex widgets
March 16, 2024
Brilliant. Substack post incoming when I find time 🙃
June 29, 2024
bless Radiolab and The Gradient for recommending Tom Mullaney content
January 8, 2023
Informative
I enjoyed reading and learning. All the different attempts at a Chinese typewriter, and the little modifications throughout the years... How China's own political history plays a role, how it intersects with the Japanese during WW2... For a language that doesn't have an alphabet, typewriting offered a unique challenge. Interesting history.
I enjoyed reading and learning. All the different attempts at a Chinese typewriter, and the little modifications throughout the years... How China's own political history plays a role, how it intersects with the Japanese during WW2... For a language that doesn't have an alphabet, typewriting offered a unique challenge. Interesting history.
December 12, 2018
The Chinese Typewriter: A History is a comprehensive study of the evolution of Chinese typewriters and, more broadly, the "technolinguistic" politics of Chinese information technologies during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Contrary to popular Western belief - the idea of a Chinese typewriter has been the butt of jokes in Western media for over a century - Chinese typewriters have existed since the 19th century and are indeed devices capable of practical use. The book covers such things as the early efforts of Westerners (often Christian missionaries) to develop Chinese typewriters, the role of language reform advocates in the Republican era, the domination by Japanese manufacturers during World War II, and the evolution of language (and typewriters) under Communism.
I was particularly affected by the idea that an alphabetic keyboard is but one simplistic form of technolinguistic mediation between human and machine. Users of alphabetic languages, and in particular, the Latin alphabet, are in a sense lucky that the standard alphabetic keyboard is an easy and highly transparent mediator. Chinese writers, on the other hand, have always required more complex mediations, ranging from the code books used in 19th century Chinese telegraphy through to the Input Method Editors used on computers today. (As a software developer by trade, I was deeply impressed by the MingKwai machine, a typewriter that developed an early predecessor of today's IMEs.) In a sense, the obviousness of the alphabetic keyboard has denied Westerners the opportunity to consider more interesting forms of textual input.
Mullaney is a bit long-winded, and the writing style is very academic - though that's not necessarily a bad thing, merely something a lay reader needs to be aware of. The book concentrates on the technolinguistic aspects of the typewriter itself, and the history and broad political context of typewriter design and manufacturing, but is a bit lighter when it comes to social impact. Mullaney does an excellent job of making the content accessible even to readers with no background in Chinese whatsoever.
Overall, The Chinese Typewriter is an important work that has given me a whole new appreciation for Chinese information technologies, and for how technology is shaped by technolinguistic culture and politics. I look forward to pre-ordering The Chinese Computer soon!
Contrary to popular Western belief - the idea of a Chinese typewriter has been the butt of jokes in Western media for over a century - Chinese typewriters have existed since the 19th century and are indeed devices capable of practical use. The book covers such things as the early efforts of Westerners (often Christian missionaries) to develop Chinese typewriters, the role of language reform advocates in the Republican era, the domination by Japanese manufacturers during World War II, and the evolution of language (and typewriters) under Communism.
I was particularly affected by the idea that an alphabetic keyboard is but one simplistic form of technolinguistic mediation between human and machine. Users of alphabetic languages, and in particular, the Latin alphabet, are in a sense lucky that the standard alphabetic keyboard is an easy and highly transparent mediator. Chinese writers, on the other hand, have always required more complex mediations, ranging from the code books used in 19th century Chinese telegraphy through to the Input Method Editors used on computers today. (As a software developer by trade, I was deeply impressed by the MingKwai machine, a typewriter that developed an early predecessor of today's IMEs.) In a sense, the obviousness of the alphabetic keyboard has denied Westerners the opportunity to consider more interesting forms of textual input.
Mullaney is a bit long-winded, and the writing style is very academic - though that's not necessarily a bad thing, merely something a lay reader needs to be aware of. The book concentrates on the technolinguistic aspects of the typewriter itself, and the history and broad political context of typewriter design and manufacturing, but is a bit lighter when it comes to social impact. Mullaney does an excellent job of making the content accessible even to readers with no background in Chinese whatsoever.
Overall, The Chinese Typewriter is an important work that has given me a whole new appreciation for Chinese information technologies, and for how technology is shaped by technolinguistic culture and politics. I look forward to pre-ordering The Chinese Computer soon!
February 10, 2019
In his fascinating and scholarly study Stanford professor Thomas Mullaney reveals the hidden history of the Chinese typewriter. This history is exemplary for the relations between the western world and Asia. An expert in Asian affairs like Kishore Mahbubani describes this relation in the New Asian hemisphere.
The typewriter as it developed in the western world is based on languages that have an alphabetical basis. Chinese, just as Japanese and Korean, does not have an alphabetical base as these languages are character based. What western engineers and companies did when they tried to develop a Chinese typewriter is to fit the Chinese characters within, what they considered to be, the standard model, that is the typewriter based on the QWERTY keyboard. These attempts were not very successful. Around 1900 American newspapers published cartoons of Chinese typewriters that ridiculed them. The idea that the actual problem was the Chinese language as such was deeply rooted. Hegel wrote in 1900 in The Philosophy of History that the very nature of Chinese writing “is at the outset a great hindrance to the development of the sciences”. The Chinese language was blamed for the fact that a Chinese typewriter could not be invented instead of the technical assumptions of the westerners.
The first successful Chinese typewriters that have been developed, mostly by Chinese, tried to work the other way around, namely to develop machines that fits the language. In the end this starting point has led to a number of different models of Chinese typewriters. These typewriters had no key boards. They were based on an ingenious search system. As the production costs where very high, the Chinese typewriter were not used on a very big scale. The popularity was much smaller than that of the western typewriters. What is interesting however, is that, more than 50 years ago, these typewriters contained a feature ‘predictive’ text, long before this was introduced on our cel phones.
The typewriter as it developed in the western world is based on languages that have an alphabetical basis. Chinese, just as Japanese and Korean, does not have an alphabetical base as these languages are character based. What western engineers and companies did when they tried to develop a Chinese typewriter is to fit the Chinese characters within, what they considered to be, the standard model, that is the typewriter based on the QWERTY keyboard. These attempts were not very successful. Around 1900 American newspapers published cartoons of Chinese typewriters that ridiculed them. The idea that the actual problem was the Chinese language as such was deeply rooted. Hegel wrote in 1900 in The Philosophy of History that the very nature of Chinese writing “is at the outset a great hindrance to the development of the sciences”. The Chinese language was blamed for the fact that a Chinese typewriter could not be invented instead of the technical assumptions of the westerners.
The first successful Chinese typewriters that have been developed, mostly by Chinese, tried to work the other way around, namely to develop machines that fits the language. In the end this starting point has led to a number of different models of Chinese typewriters. These typewriters had no key boards. They were based on an ingenious search system. As the production costs where very high, the Chinese typewriter were not used on a very big scale. The popularity was much smaller than that of the western typewriters. What is interesting however, is that, more than 50 years ago, these typewriters contained a feature ‘predictive’ text, long before this was introduced on our cel phones.
January 9, 2020
The history of the Chinese Typewriter is ultimately, the history of China and the information technology of the rest of the world. Reading this book myself being a Chinese, it provides a unique and fascinating perspective to see how China is playing catching ups in the entirety of the twentieth century. While exploring the incarnations and evolutions of Chinese typewriters (though you'll soon learn that they're exactly not for typing), Mullaney also delves into the politics, wars, intellectuals, zealots, patriots, industries along with the machine.
Most people like me who were born in the digital age are surely oblivious to the extreme difficulties of putting Chinese characters onto a piece of paper. The computers gave us much liberation from the toil. “Typing” on a QWERTY seems second nature to me. However, as Mullaney will point out very soon into the book, it hasn't always been like this. It took generations of experiments, failures, and ingenuity to solve a problem westerners can't even begin to fathom. We'd even think that it was the creation of computers that freed the Chinese from the seemingly impossible feat, it actually began decades prior, with tragedies and setbacks. The unfolding of that piece of story was brilliantly written.
A most interesting chapter 7 described what we call “共产中文”, or Communism Chinese. I find that so relevant even to this very day. Like all histories, one must learn to be cautious of the now with lessons of the then.
Overall I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who is Chinese or is interested in China/Chinese.
Most people like me who were born in the digital age are surely oblivious to the extreme difficulties of putting Chinese characters onto a piece of paper. The computers gave us much liberation from the toil. “Typing” on a QWERTY seems second nature to me. However, as Mullaney will point out very soon into the book, it hasn't always been like this. It took generations of experiments, failures, and ingenuity to solve a problem westerners can't even begin to fathom. We'd even think that it was the creation of computers that freed the Chinese from the seemingly impossible feat, it actually began decades prior, with tragedies and setbacks. The unfolding of that piece of story was brilliantly written.
A most interesting chapter 7 described what we call “共产中文”, or Communism Chinese. I find that so relevant even to this very day. Like all histories, one must learn to be cautious of the now with lessons of the then.
Overall I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who is Chinese or is interested in China/Chinese.
May 13, 2020
Forty years ago I asked my Chinese history professor how the telegraph system worked in GMD era China. He didn't really know, despite being an expert in that era. I asked if they just used a limited vocabulary with a number for each word. He suspected that was the case, but didn't have a reference for it. This book provides the answer, which is deeply imbedded in the development of both technological and linguistic methods of transmitting the written Chinese language onto paper/screens.
Another question I had asked was about Lin Yutang. I had read one of his books, but had no feeling for why he had a mostly glowing reputation in the US. While this book did not directly answer that, I was surprised to learn that Lin had invented a very efficient style of typewriter that embodied a linguistic approach to the challenges, different from earlier, clunkier attempts. His design did not successfully move into the manufacturing stage, but it presaged a method followed by current computer basic typography in Chinese.
Continuing struggles over language reform evidenced themselves in the search for mechanical methods to print the language. This history intertwines those searches. I'm off now to see if Mullaney's promised book on Chinese computing systems has been published.
Another question I had asked was about Lin Yutang. I had read one of his books, but had no feeling for why he had a mostly glowing reputation in the US. While this book did not directly answer that, I was surprised to learn that Lin had invented a very efficient style of typewriter that embodied a linguistic approach to the challenges, different from earlier, clunkier attempts. His design did not successfully move into the manufacturing stage, but it presaged a method followed by current computer basic typography in Chinese.
Continuing struggles over language reform evidenced themselves in the search for mechanical methods to print the language. This history intertwines those searches. I'm off now to see if Mullaney's promised book on Chinese computing systems has been published.
May 20, 2018
A very well researched book on a relatively obscured topic. The wealth of historical information used in the writing of the book is impressive, to say the least. The problem-solving aspects of developing a Chinese typewrite appealed to me the most as different developers experimented with vastly divergent approaches, all original and ingenious. Its ultimate link to modern IT input methods is also intriguing. A system of retrieval methodology that once was only applicable (and necessary) for the Chinese language became universally suitable for all retrieval applications, most significantly, the auto-complete in texting.
P.S. The part about Lin Yutang's typewriter was the most fascinating to me. I had known him to be a literary luminary of his era, but I was shocked to learned of his mechanical engineering prowess. The machine that he designed was so intricate and ahead of his time, as if he had traveled to the future and brought it back from an advance civilization.
P.S. The part about Lin Yutang's typewriter was the most fascinating to me. I had known him to be a literary luminary of his era, but I was shocked to learned of his mechanical engineering prowess. The machine that he designed was so intricate and ahead of his time, as if he had traveled to the future and brought it back from an advance civilization.
March 31, 2021
An academic treatise of 500 pages on the history of the Chinese typewriter might not sound to be much of a page-turner, but Mullaney has crafted a fascinating and well-researched book which deals with the relationship between technology and language and everything falling in between. It is only in the final third (once the Chinese 'typewriter' has been more or less developed) that the book loses speed, but the surprisingly exhilarating first 200-250 pages are rewarding enough to make up for that.
April 3, 2024
An exhilarating exploration of the intersection between text, meaning, language, thought, and politics seen through the lens of Chinese type. Simultaneously conceptual and concrete, Mullaney's narrative and argument are tightly structured, lucidly and compellingly rendered, and profoundly humane.
September 12, 2019
This book was both more and less interesting than I expected. Having done my time in academia, I am not automatically stymied or put off by sentences like this one:
"As linguistically embedded and mediated technologies, Chinese telegraphy, typewriting, and computing explode conventional narratives of "technology transfer" and "diffusion" that have long guided our understanding of how industrial, military, and other apparatuses and practices circulated from Western loci of invention to non-Western loci of adoption."
Whew. While this is not an easy read at times, much of it is not overly technical, theoretical, or jargon-heavy. And the underlying questions I find fascinating. How do you create a typewriter for a language that has no alphabet, but has rather characters which represent both sound and meaning. How do you "alphabetize" anything?
The cultural issues frequently loom as large as the practical, engineering ones for the multiple people and companies who try to solve these problems for decades.
"As linguistically embedded and mediated technologies, Chinese telegraphy, typewriting, and computing explode conventional narratives of "technology transfer" and "diffusion" that have long guided our understanding of how industrial, military, and other apparatuses and practices circulated from Western loci of invention to non-Western loci of adoption."
Whew. While this is not an easy read at times, much of it is not overly technical, theoretical, or jargon-heavy. And the underlying questions I find fascinating. How do you create a typewriter for a language that has no alphabet, but has rather characters which represent both sound and meaning. How do you "alphabetize" anything?
The cultural issues frequently loom as large as the practical, engineering ones for the multiple people and companies who try to solve these problems for decades.
June 11, 2019
The Chinese Typewriter: A History by Thomas S. Mullaney was perhaps the most exhaustive research of its kind. An academic book of 321 pages printed in a tiny typeface with 64 pages of endnotes, The Chinese Typewriter was a slow read at first, given that Mullaney populated the first chapter with so much jargon. Academic reads tend to be repetitive--and this one was no different--yet so many new terms referred to again and again made a tiring read. Fortunately Mullaney elaborated on these terms--in painstaking detail--so by the end of the book I did not feel as if any of the material was beyond my comprehension or was addressed insufficiently. If he mentioned it, he covered it.
Mullaney started off with the myth of the football-field-size Chinese typewriter. Imagine a contraption with a keyboard so huge that you would need stairs to climb to the highest row. Chinese keyboards were never this big, in spite of the cartoonists who drew them to be as high as pyramids. The author described the earliest typewriter models and the methods each inventor used to input the language of ideograms onto paper. Mullaney gets into keyboards, of course, and we soon learn that some models of Chinese typewriters didn't even have keys.
The mechanics and muscle memory of typing as we know it on an English keyboard--or any keyboard with letters on individual keys--is lost when compared with typing in Chinese. Mullaney covers these differences and you are left with "Oh yeah!" moments when you realize that you can't do that in Chinese. For one, there is no blind typing in Chinese. When I learned typing in high school on a manual typewriter, we eventually grew to trust ourselves to type without looking at the keyboard or the typed page. By keeping our eyes solely on the manuscript that we were copying from, we discovered our typing speed would increase. This technique, blind typing, cannot be done in Chinese. The Chinese tray bed was too vast and required extreme precision in key selection. Even the fastest Chinese typist could never do this blindfolded.
Tray beds were customized by each typist. Chinese typists soon realized that in their jobs they would encounter certain words or phrases over and over. In PR China [1] official documents might refer repeatedly to "Chairman Mao" and "agricultural quotas", for example. These two concepts would be composed of multiple ideograms, and it was convenient for the typist to arrange his or her own tray bed so that these ideograms were side-by-side. Mullaney revealed techniques for predictive text tray bed arrangement that cut down on ideogram search time. If one character was often used in combination with others to make multiple words, it helped to surround this character with the eight most common characters to ease the combination process. The author included tray bed organization maps provided with typewriter manuals which aided the typist to personalize his or her own machine.
Typists had to learn when to apply extra pressure to certain keys. Some ideograms--like the one designating "one", as a perfect example--could not be struck with force for fear of causing damage:
"Each time the typist depressed the selection lever, the force of each type act had to be finely attuned to the weight of each character, a measurement that corresponded directly to the character's stroke count. Should one type the single-stroke (and thus lighter) character yi (一 "one") with the same force as the sixteen-stroke (and thus heavier) character long (龍 "dragon"), one would quite likely puncture the typing or carbon paper and have to begin the document anew. To type long with the same force as yi, however, would result in a faint, illegible registration (also making it ill-suited for carbon-paper copying)."
In North America and Europe, typists and office jobs were often the domain of women. In China, gender disparity still put women in the majority but at a smaller percentage. About a third of the typing workforce in China were men.
Just when the pièce de résistance typewriter model, the MingKwai, appeared in the late forties, its moment in the spotlight faded. Once the People's Republic was established--and when PR China decided to send its soldiers to Korea to battle the UN forces in the south--then American and western European support in manufacturing evaporated. During the time Mao was in power, the typewriter became an instrument of disseminating propaganda.
My praise to Mullaney for never stooping to use the ghastly they, them or their when referring to singular persons. He always used his or her, etc., and did so with style to make the text flow smoothly. It was a pleasure to read singular pronouns when referring to singular people.
Mullaney had opened his book with cartoons and jokes about the colossal size of Chinese typewriters, and as typewriters evolved into computers, the jokes moved into the information age. In spite of the limitless world of virtual automation where even keyboards can be projected onto a flat surface by beams of light, people are still stuck on the idea of a clunky, clumsy, burdensome mechanical Chinese keyboard--even for computers. He ended his book with this observation, which I believe can also apply to the present:
"As we continue our examination of Chinese and global information technology in the age of computing and new media, then, one of our biggest challenges remains: to liberate our imaginations from a past that never actually existed."
[1] Before the Communist Revolution I refer to both mainland China and the island of Taiwan collectively as China. After 1949 I make a distinction between mainland China, the People's Republic of China or PR China, which is not the same as China, or the Republic of China, which occupies the island of Taiwan.
Mullaney started off with the myth of the football-field-size Chinese typewriter. Imagine a contraption with a keyboard so huge that you would need stairs to climb to the highest row. Chinese keyboards were never this big, in spite of the cartoonists who drew them to be as high as pyramids. The author described the earliest typewriter models and the methods each inventor used to input the language of ideograms onto paper. Mullaney gets into keyboards, of course, and we soon learn that some models of Chinese typewriters didn't even have keys.
The mechanics and muscle memory of typing as we know it on an English keyboard--or any keyboard with letters on individual keys--is lost when compared with typing in Chinese. Mullaney covers these differences and you are left with "Oh yeah!" moments when you realize that you can't do that in Chinese. For one, there is no blind typing in Chinese. When I learned typing in high school on a manual typewriter, we eventually grew to trust ourselves to type without looking at the keyboard or the typed page. By keeping our eyes solely on the manuscript that we were copying from, we discovered our typing speed would increase. This technique, blind typing, cannot be done in Chinese. The Chinese tray bed was too vast and required extreme precision in key selection. Even the fastest Chinese typist could never do this blindfolded.
Tray beds were customized by each typist. Chinese typists soon realized that in their jobs they would encounter certain words or phrases over and over. In PR China [1] official documents might refer repeatedly to "Chairman Mao" and "agricultural quotas", for example. These two concepts would be composed of multiple ideograms, and it was convenient for the typist to arrange his or her own tray bed so that these ideograms were side-by-side. Mullaney revealed techniques for predictive text tray bed arrangement that cut down on ideogram search time. If one character was often used in combination with others to make multiple words, it helped to surround this character with the eight most common characters to ease the combination process. The author included tray bed organization maps provided with typewriter manuals which aided the typist to personalize his or her own machine.
Typists had to learn when to apply extra pressure to certain keys. Some ideograms--like the one designating "one", as a perfect example--could not be struck with force for fear of causing damage:
"Each time the typist depressed the selection lever, the force of each type act had to be finely attuned to the weight of each character, a measurement that corresponded directly to the character's stroke count. Should one type the single-stroke (and thus lighter) character yi (一 "one") with the same force as the sixteen-stroke (and thus heavier) character long (龍 "dragon"), one would quite likely puncture the typing or carbon paper and have to begin the document anew. To type long with the same force as yi, however, would result in a faint, illegible registration (also making it ill-suited for carbon-paper copying)."
In North America and Europe, typists and office jobs were often the domain of women. In China, gender disparity still put women in the majority but at a smaller percentage. About a third of the typing workforce in China were men.
Just when the pièce de résistance typewriter model, the MingKwai, appeared in the late forties, its moment in the spotlight faded. Once the People's Republic was established--and when PR China decided to send its soldiers to Korea to battle the UN forces in the south--then American and western European support in manufacturing evaporated. During the time Mao was in power, the typewriter became an instrument of disseminating propaganda.
My praise to Mullaney for never stooping to use the ghastly they, them or their when referring to singular persons. He always used his or her, etc., and did so with style to make the text flow smoothly. It was a pleasure to read singular pronouns when referring to singular people.
Mullaney had opened his book with cartoons and jokes about the colossal size of Chinese typewriters, and as typewriters evolved into computers, the jokes moved into the information age. In spite of the limitless world of virtual automation where even keyboards can be projected onto a flat surface by beams of light, people are still stuck on the idea of a clunky, clumsy, burdensome mechanical Chinese keyboard--even for computers. He ended his book with this observation, which I believe can also apply to the present:
"As we continue our examination of Chinese and global information technology in the age of computing and new media, then, one of our biggest challenges remains: to liberate our imaginations from a past that never actually existed."
[1] Before the Communist Revolution I refer to both mainland China and the island of Taiwan collectively as China. After 1949 I make a distinction between mainland China, the People's Republic of China or PR China, which is not the same as China, or the Republic of China, which occupies the island of Taiwan.
October 10, 2019
I learned a lot about the past 100-120 years of Chinese history, and the material towards the end about organising characters by frequently-occuring pairs and mechanical precursors to pinyin-style input methods was fascinating. Ultimately I don't think I'm quite the target reader – I can't speak, read or type Chinese (or, really, any language with a non-Latin script), and I have only a peripheral interest in input methods and east Asian history. If you tick any of those boxes I can recommend this; otherwise you might find it slow going.
July 5, 2018
An interesting dive into the twisting story of the development of the Chinese typewriter. Overall, there was a lot of info, although it's written from an academic point of view, so it could be a bit dry at times, and I thought it seemed like it was originally written to have each chapter be able to be published independently, so there is some repetition from time to time. Still worth a read if the subject interests you.
October 20, 2017
A fascinating discussion about means of organizing and accessing Chinese characters for retrieval and re-production. The difficulties of producing a typewriter that could type all Chinese characters - or commonly used ones, or radicals, or ... - at a rate comparable to typing Roman-style English letters would seem impossible, yet new methods of retrieval made it almost so.
November 10, 2019
Academic in style, a profoundly learned exposition, which manages to remain fascinating to the very end. Although written predominantly from socio-political and historical perspectives, it contains sufficient engineering detail to give it technical appeal as well. I suspect that appreciation of the work will be deeper if you have some prior knowledge of Chinese language (as does this reviewer).
November 25, 2018
And there's a sequel coming from Mullaney on the Chinese computer!
February 17, 2020
this was eye opening. a fascinating read
February 17, 2021
I found this non-fiction account of the development and history of the Chinese typewriter to be fascinating and well-researched, but I cannot recommend it to most people (more on that later). The title itself is both a simple statement of the subject of the book, yet is also misleading. There is no such thing as the Chinese typewriter, just as there is no such thing as the American automobile.
There have been dozens of different devices made or at least proposed to serve as Chinese typewriters, at first by Americans and Europeans, but later by the Chinese and then Japanese. They have taken many forms: with and without keys; using slugs or discs or cylindrical rack trays; with ~10,000 characters of less than half that many; with or without Japanese or Roman alphabets, and so on. All of these are explored in depth and generously illustrated with photos, charts, and other graphics. I enjoyed the book greatly.
My hesitation to recommend lies primarily in the author's inexcusably pedantic, pretentious, and comically convoluted writing style. He never uses a two-syllable word if he can find a four- or five-syllable one to take its place. Some of the words and phrases you should prepare yourself for include: orthopraxy, referential paratechnologies, technosomatic ensemble, machinic, and semiotic substrate. His sentences are often so long it is obvious the publisher made no effort to use an editor. Here's an example:
To the contrary, once China and Chinese characters had been reconceptualized as a communicative problem -- a puzzle in need of a solution rather than a medium of communicative possibility -- this opened up a new, exciting, and lucrative possibility for Japanese and Korean inventors, one in which Japan and Korea could be transformed from the beneficiaries of Chinese cultural inheritance to sites where the puzzle of East Asian technolinguistic modernity might itself be solved.
Your assignment, class, is to diagram that sentence. When I read that to my wife, who used to be the Assistant Director for a Stanford PhD. program and who proofread doctoral theses, she asked if it was a parody because she couldn't believe anyone could seriously write a general market book that way. When I told her the author was a Stanford professor, she snorted and said she could believe it after all. Despite this, the writing is content-rich and relatively concise compared to other academic works I've read lately.
Another warning: I may be the ideal reader for this book. I've spent a year each studying Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin). Although I can't actually read either, I know a few hundred characters and I am already very familiar with the concepts of radicals, kana, and reduced character sets (e.g. toyo kanji). I'm also a long-time cipher and cryptology nerd with extensive experience with issues such as alternative methods of ordering letters and words, CTC encoding, and so forth. If these are all foreign concepts to you, the book is likely to be a tough slog for you. The author does a good job of explaining these things, but there's a lot to take in. There is a great deal of Chinese political and social history mixed in with the central topic as well. It would be helpful if you had some knowledge along those lines.
There have been dozens of different devices made or at least proposed to serve as Chinese typewriters, at first by Americans and Europeans, but later by the Chinese and then Japanese. They have taken many forms: with and without keys; using slugs or discs or cylindrical rack trays; with ~10,000 characters of less than half that many; with or without Japanese or Roman alphabets, and so on. All of these are explored in depth and generously illustrated with photos, charts, and other graphics. I enjoyed the book greatly.
My hesitation to recommend lies primarily in the author's inexcusably pedantic, pretentious, and comically convoluted writing style. He never uses a two-syllable word if he can find a four- or five-syllable one to take its place. Some of the words and phrases you should prepare yourself for include: orthopraxy, referential paratechnologies, technosomatic ensemble, machinic, and semiotic substrate. His sentences are often so long it is obvious the publisher made no effort to use an editor. Here's an example:
To the contrary, once China and Chinese characters had been reconceptualized as a communicative problem -- a puzzle in need of a solution rather than a medium of communicative possibility -- this opened up a new, exciting, and lucrative possibility for Japanese and Korean inventors, one in which Japan and Korea could be transformed from the beneficiaries of Chinese cultural inheritance to sites where the puzzle of East Asian technolinguistic modernity might itself be solved.
Your assignment, class, is to diagram that sentence. When I read that to my wife, who used to be the Assistant Director for a Stanford PhD. program and who proofread doctoral theses, she asked if it was a parody because she couldn't believe anyone could seriously write a general market book that way. When I told her the author was a Stanford professor, she snorted and said she could believe it after all. Despite this, the writing is content-rich and relatively concise compared to other academic works I've read lately.
Another warning: I may be the ideal reader for this book. I've spent a year each studying Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin). Although I can't actually read either, I know a few hundred characters and I am already very familiar with the concepts of radicals, kana, and reduced character sets (e.g. toyo kanji). I'm also a long-time cipher and cryptology nerd with extensive experience with issues such as alternative methods of ordering letters and words, CTC encoding, and so forth. If these are all foreign concepts to you, the book is likely to be a tough slog for you. The author does a good job of explaining these things, but there's a lot to take in. There is a great deal of Chinese political and social history mixed in with the central topic as well. It would be helpful if you had some knowledge along those lines.
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