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https://www.npr.org/2025/07/05/nx-s1-5405452/chinese-typewriter-mingkwai-stanford>
'STANFORD, California — Scholars in the U.S., Taiwan and China are buzzing
about the discovery of an old typewriter, because the long-lost machine is part
of the origin story of modern Chinese computing — and central to ongoing
questions about the politics of language.
China's entry into modern computing was critical in allowing the country to
become the technological powerhouse it is today. But before this, some of the
brightest Chinese minds of the 20th century had to figure out a way to harness
the complex pictographs that make up written Chinese into a typewriter, and
later, a computer.
One man succeeded more than any other before him. His name was Lin Yutang, a
noted linguist and writer from southern China. He made just one prototype of
his Chinese typewriter, which he dubbed the MingKwai, "bright and clear" in
Mandarin Chinese.
Detailed U.S. patent records and diagrams of the typewriter from the 1940s are
public, but the physical prototype went missing. Scholars assumed it was lost
to history.
"I had really, truly thought it was gone," says Thomas Mullaney, a history
professor at Stanford University who has studied Chinese computing for two
decades and is the author of
The Chinese Typewriter.'
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
