The prom is, as people discovered over time, especially in the 1950s and 60s, words like Apple and aardvark do not tend to show up together in actual language. The word apple comes near the word aardvark so a person knows where it is. It is not enough to bet that you can imagine for yourself. When the first Chinese typewriter started to roll off the floors in the late 1910s and early 1920s, the way that those characters that I mentioned, the way that they would have been organized on the trade bed with be basically be according to standard dictionary order. Thom, since the language has no mathematical structure and thousands of characters, typewriter operators had to come up with shortcuts to be able to use the typewriter, isn't that right? You see it beyond the physical machines that they are. Today, we look at it with it modernize and we see these artifacts and legacies of the past which tell a compelling story. Also, it is interesting because you are seeing something that at the time it was considered very ordinary like we use computers today. When we and covered and opened the great and got to see some of Tom's precious typewriters, it was absolutely exciting and breathtaking. It is something that he think only professionals would be using. Most people have never seen a Chinese typewriter before. I have talked to many of our constituents. This is something that we say, a paradox for many. That is right back Tiffany, before this went on display, had you seen this? Back I had not. To type, you move the trade bed around to find the characters that you want to bring into the typing position. It is a grid, roughly 2500 of the most commonly used Chinese characters in the language. The typewriters worry - were used to, the keyboard is one of the main features but on a Chinese typewriter, instead of a keyboard that you press the buttons with your keys or with your fingers, there is a trade bed. What do these machines look like? Is there any resemblance to a Western typewriter?įirst feature that strikes most people when they see a Chinese typewriter for the first time, the basic fact that there is no keyboard. Welcome to the program.ħ0 is the executive director of this Museum. Radical machines and Chinese in the information age. A new exhibit at the San Diego Chinese historical Museum will feature the Chinese typewriter and its history. The reason the machines are so daunting, the Chinese language has no alphabet and there are more than 70,000 Chinese characters used in writing by hand the typewriters that encompassed the language are larger than Western typewriters and you are of them exist.
Were years, it was a metaphor for something impossibly complex of frustrating. Spinning continuously at a speed of 60 revolutions per minute, or once per second, the drum measured 7 inches in diameter, and 11 inches in length. Its surface was etched with 5,400 Chinese characters, letters of the English alphabet, punctuation marks, numerals, and a handful of other symbols.This is KPBS Midday Edition.
Just as the film explained, “if you want to type word number 4862 you would press 4-8-6-2 and the machine would type the right character.”Įach four-digit code corresponded with a character etched on a revolving drum inside the typewriter.
To type a Chinese character, one depressed a total of 4 keys-one from each bank-more or less simultaneously, compared by one observer to playing a chord on the piano. With just these 36 keys, the machine was capable of producing up to 5,400 Chinese characters in all, wielding a language that was infinitely more difficult to mechanize than English or other Western writing systems. On the keyboard affixed to the hulking, gunmetal gray chassis, 36 keys were divided into four banks: 0 through 5 0 through 9 0 through 9 and 0 through 9.
The IBM Chinese typewriter was a formidable machine-not something just anyone could handle with the aplomb of the young typist in the film. I can’t even imagine how difficult this must have been to type on!