Started by Chidi Eze (@pixelpushr) ·
how do you build a typewriter for a language with thousands of characters?
The common design was a tray of a couple thousand metal characters with an arm that picked one at a time. Lin Yutang's MingKwai in the 1940s used keys to narrow things down to a handful of candidates you then picked from, which is weirdly close to how phone input and autocomplete work now.
6 sources · 51 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “how did chinese typewriters work”
- Ended at
- Chinese input method
The Trail
- “how did chinese typewriters work” (google.com)
- Chinese typewriter (en.wikipedia.org)
- Lin Yutang (en.wikipedia.org)
the novelist. he sank a lot of his own money into a typewriter design
- “mingkwai typewriter prototype found” (google.com)
- Thomas S. Mullaney (en.wikipedia.org)
his argument: chinese typists were doing 'input', searching and choosing, decades before computers
- Chinese input method (en.wikipedia.org)
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