The Chinese Typewriter: A History

by Thomas S. Mullaney

Overview

How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today.

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.

A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Columbia University

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262536103
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Series:	The MIT Press
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	500
Sales rank:	911,515
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: There Is No Alphabet Here 1

1 Incompatible With Modernity 35

2 Puzzling Chinese 75

3 Radical Machines 123

4 What Do You Call A Typewriter With No Keys? 161

5 Controlling The Kanjisphere 195

6 Qwerty Is Dead! Long Live Qwerty! 237

7 The Typing Rebellion 283

Conclusion: Toward A History Of Chinese Computing And The Age Of Input 315

Table Of Archives 323

Biographies Of Key Historical Persons 325

Character Glossary 329

Notes 337

Bibliography Of Sources 401

Index 457

What People are Saying About This

Wang Hui

The Chinese Typewriter is a fascinating book: in the light ofnew developments in computer science, Thomas Mullaney brings us a completely different interpretationofnonalphabetic Chinese and the modern fate of Chinese culture through thehistorical lensofthe Chinese typewriter. This is a rich bookthatencompasses different resources, historical insights, andintriguingstorytelling from long and broadperspectives.

Ai Weiwei

The Chinese Typewriter is a fascinating and extensive study into the characteristics of the Chinese language.

Endorsement

The Chinese Typewriter is a fascinating book: in the light ofnew developments in computer science, Thomas Mullaney brings us a completely different interpretationofnonalphabetic Chinese and the modern fate of Chinese culture through thehistorical lensofthe Chinese typewriter. This is a rich bookthatencompasses different resources, historical insights, andintriguingstorytelling from long and broadperspectives.

—Wang Hui, Professor of Literature and History, Tsinghua University; author of China's Twentieth Century

From the Publisher

The Chinese Typewriter is a fascinating and extensive study into the characteristics of the Chinese language.

—Ai Weiwei

Mullaney reveals a topic I have always attempted to investigate through my art. The book is not about the tool itself, but the characteristics of Chinese-writing cultures. It explains what is behind Chinese thinking and its unique working method, and why China is what it is today.

—Xu Bing, artist; creator of Book from the Sky and Square Word Calligraphy

The Chinese Typewriter is lucidly written and brilliantly conceived. This book will help readers understand and appreciate China, the Chinese language, and writing in general with greater and necessary nuance.

—Lisa Gitelman, editor of “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron and author of Paper Knowledge

The Chinese Typewriter is a fascinating book: in the light of new developments in computer science, Thomas Mullaney brings us a completely different interpretation of nonalphabetic Chinese and the modern fate of Chinese culture through the historical lens of the Chinese typewriter. This is a rich book that encompasses different resources, historical insights, and intriguing storytelling from long and broad perspectives.

—Wang Hui, Professor of Literature and History, Tsinghua University; author of China's Twentieth Century

Lisa Gitelman

The Chinese Typewriter is lucidly written and brilliantly conceived. This book will help readers understand and appreciate China, the Chinese language, and writing in general with greater and necessary nuance.

Xu Bing

Mullaney reveals a topic I have always attempted to investigate through my art. The book is not about the tool itself, but the characteristics of Chinese-writing cultures. It explains what is behind Chinese thinking and its unique working method, and why China is what it is today.

Editorial Reviews

...this gives us a fresh view of the issues...—New Scientist—

His theme – the preservation of characters, a basic element of Chinese culture, and how they entered, and became part of, the modern informational world – is well worth our attention.

—Times Higher Education—

A surprisingly engaging read.

—The New Yorker—

Perhaps above all, Mullaney sheds multi-angled light on the remarkable battering that Chinese characters suffered throughout the twentieth century.

—Times Literary Supplement—

Mullaney does more than just deconstruct the myth of the unsuitability of the Chinese language. An important part of his project is to uncover the hidden history, alternatives, and trials and errors in the development of typewriters, especially Chinese typewriters, that has been buried by the triumph of the QWERTY keyboard. These fascinating and nuanced stories of design and engineering ultimately also form a history that decenters the single-shift QWERTY keyboard, which was mainly developed for English typewriting.

—Cross-Currents—

The Chinese Typewriter delivers the fascinating account of how the history of technology has played out over national and cultural boundaries. Theauthor also manages the impressive feat of making a highly technical story very readable.

—Technikgeschichte—

The Chinese Typewriter is a richly textured, multi-tiered study not just of an artefact but also of an entire conceptual universe.

—The Journal of Design History—

From the Publisher

Perhaps above all, Mullaney sheds multi-angled light on the remarkable battering that Chinese characters suffered throughout the twentieth century.

—Times Literary Supplement

Reviews

...a surprisingly engaging read.

The New Yorker

His theme – the preservation of characters, a basic element of Chinese culture, and how they entered, and became part of, the modern informational world – is well worth our attention.

Times Higher Education

...this gives us a fresh view of the issues...

New Scientist