Can I read The Chinese Typewriter: A History (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University) on EtoBox?

The Chinese Typewriter: A History (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University) by Thomas S. Mullaney, Thomas S Mullaney is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Chinese Typewriter: A History (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University) about?

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 Pigeo

Who reads The Chinese Typewriter: A History (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University)?

Author

Thomas S. Mullaney, Thomas S Mullaney

Publisher

The MIT Press

Published

2017

Language

EN

ISBN

9780262340786

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

History, Technology, Reference

Rating

4.2 / 5 (67 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14