The Chinese Typewriter

by Thomas Mullaney

  Taiyi wondered to herself what was passing through the minds of the Remington executives—perhaps that her father was “a mad inventor.”49 Outside, the rain was still falling, and Lin Yutang contemplated whether it was best to cancel the event they had planned the following day for journalists—a potentially terrible embarrassment, but perhaps a necessary one. Upon returning home, Lin called the engineer, who promptly came over and had the MingKwai back up and running.50 The press event was saved, yet the sting of the day’s humiliation was still fresh.

  Over the next three days, the Lin family home at 7 Gracie Square served as headquarters for the MingKwai press campaign. Journalists from the local and international Chinese press crowded about Taiyi, calling out “Miss Lin! Miss Lin!” (“Lin xiaojie! Lin xiaojie!”), one after the other.51 With her father watching on, no doubt keenly interested in her performance, she was center stage. To convince newspapermen that the machine could handle “unscripted” texts, Lin Yutang invited reporters to “select any word,” whereupon “Miss Lin typed it with speed and efficiency.”52 The gendered undertone of the event was perhaps nowhere clearer than in the photograph that later appeared in the New York World Tribune in which, evidently, the journalist did not even realize who this young woman was. The caption read: “Dr. Lin Yutang, author and philosopher, watches a secretary work a typewriter which types Chinese, English, Japanese and Russian” (figure 6.10).53

  6.10 Photograph of Lin Yutang and Lin Taiyi; from “Inventor Shows His Chinese Typewriter,” Acme News Pictures—New York Bureau (August 21, 1947)

  Lin Taiyi’s performance was flawless by all accounts, moreover.54 She made MingKwai look effortless, even going so far as to boast to the Los Angeles Times that the machine “took her two minutes to learn to operate.”55 Building upon this successful showing, the MingKwai media campaign bore fruit quickly. On August 22 alone, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York World Tribune, New York Herald Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Chung Sai Yat Po all featured articles on MingKwai, followed in subsequent days by the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Business Week, and Newsweek.56 Articles began to appear in mainstream science and technical magazines in the fall and winter, beginning with Popular Science in November and Popular Mechanics in December. It would seem that MingKwai was, as Lin Yutang claimed, destined to become the first Chinese typewriter to achieve the same kind of widespread use and acclaim enjoyed by its Western counterpart.

  The “Failure” of MingKwai and the Birth of Input

  If MingKwai constituted a momentous break in the history of modern Chinese information technology, we might expect it to have swept the Chinese-language market to become the first widely celebrated Chinese typewriter in history. It did not. Instead, the one and only MingKwai prototype is gone, discarded some time during the 1960s with little fanfare by someone at the Mergenthaler Linotype corporation. Never mass-manufactured, the machine perhaps lies in a landfill somewhere in New York or New Jersey, entombed in an unmarked grave beneath decades of accumulated garbage. Or perhaps it was scrapped for parts, or melted down. Why was the machine never mass-manufactured? How do we account for its failure, and what does its failure tell us—and not tell us—about the broader history of Chinese information technology at the midpoint of the twentieth century?

  The anticlimactic conclusion of Lin’s MingKwai dream played out in a private exchange between the inventor and his close friends, Pearl S. Buck and Richard Walsh. “Dear Y.T. and Hung, Dick and I have spent a sleepless night over your letter, thinking what we can do, in view of your financial situation.” So began the May 1947 letter from Buck to Lin, coming in response to Lin’s earlier, and no doubt humbling, request for financial assistance. After a tremendous outlay of capital for the Ming­Kwai project, the writer-turned-inventor faced mounting and soon unbearable personal debt, and must have felt a certain embarrassment in seeking help from his longtime associates—the same friends to whom he had sent his personalized “birthday” card when MingKwai was but a newborn.

  Buck recounted her own financial difficulties with her magazine, ASIA, and the farm her family now operated. “I am trying steadily to get the farm on a self-supporting basis, but it is like the typewriter—you have to put in before you can take out.” “I shall have to say to you, dear friends, what I say to my own sister—I have shelter and food, and these I can share with you, but I have no money.”57

  If Lin’s financial troubles were beginning to weigh heavily, making it less likely by the day that the MingKwai project would ever succeed, so too were the geopolitics of the late 1940s. On April 7, 1948, less than one year after Buck’s letter, the city of Luoyang fell to Chinese Communist forces, followed by Kaifeng on June 19, Changchun on October 20, and Shenyang on November 1. The tide of the Civil War between Nationalist and Communist forces was turning rapidly, with the Communists launching their offensive for Beijing and Tianjin in mid-December. By January, Chiang Kai-shek had stepped down from office in an attempt to stop the bleeding, and the Chinese Communists established their headquarters in Beijing.

  Watching the Chinese Civil War unfold from afar, executives at Mergenthaler Linotype and other US companies grew increasingly nervous about the fate of their patent rights in the event of a Communist victory: “Little patent protection,” an internal company report speculated, “could be looked for in a Communist dominated country”58 and “import and currency restrictions might be imposed.”59 What is more, Mergenthaler saw on the horizon the possibility of the long-delayed arrival of the “Chinese alphabet,” with the Chinese Cadmus coming this time, not in the form of the “Chinese phonetic alphabet” of the 1920s, but in the form of Mao Zedong and his calls for the full-scale Romanization of Chinese script (calls that would also be later abandoned). “It has been reported that the Communists favor the Romanization of the Chinese language,” Martin Reed noted in his Mergenthaler report, “and such a program would of course lessen the demand for Lin’s typewriter. … If the educational system were based on Romanization, the need for such a typewriter would rapidly disappear.”60 “In view of the political and military developments in China,” the report concluded, “it now appears that this program should be modified with a view to keeping expenditures of effort and money at a minimum until the situation in that country becomes clarified.”61

  Even after Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic in October 1949, however, optimism prevailed that some sort of market might exist for MingKwai. Tests of the machine continued to be run on Chinese high school graduates in the United States, the experiments being directed by Professor Chung-yuan Chang of Columbia University, and consistently revealing positive results. As an internal report indicated, “Dr. Chang expressed the opinion that Lin’s system of classification is the best yet devised.”62 Interest in the machine continued after 1949 as well, particularly on the part of the US State Department, the United Nations, and many of the period’s leading scholars of Asia. MingKwai was conducive to other processes besides typewriting, it was felt, most notably telegraphic transmission and offset printing. MingKwai was “admirably adapted to the coding and decoding of Chinese for telegraphic coding,” the report continued, and when coupled with offset printing technology, “the Lin machine forms a nucleus for a simple and inexpensive printing plant, which can be made mobile if desired by mounting on a medium sized truck.”63 MingKwai, it seemed, could be weaponized.64

  The death knell of the MingKwai project came, however, with the escalation of hostilities on the Korean peninsula. Once China had committed its “volunteers” to the battle, and once it became clear that Communist Chinese forces were shedding the blood of US and Allied military personnel, all hope for the dream perished. In a fitting irony, we can read the demise of MingKwai in a grainy, black-and-white film produced by the Psychological Warfare Unit of the Eighth United States Army in Korea (EUSAK) (figure 6.11). Here we see a young female clerk—likely a Taiwanese woman—using a tray-bed, common usage Chinese typewriter
to help produce leaflets to be scattered from Allied bombers flying near Communist-controlled sectors of the Korean peninsula. “Your leaders have deceived you,” one leaflet reads, in an attempt to persuade Communist Chinese soldiers that their commanding officers were leading them down a “road to certain death.”65 MingKwai, it seemed, had failed.

  6.11 United States Army propaganda film featuring the role of Chinese typewriters in the Korean War (selections)

  In our attempts to explain MingKwai’s failure, however, we risk overlooking a vitally important factor: It did not fail. Although created as a singular device—a prototype developed in the middle part of the twentieth century and debuted in the late 1940s—MingKwai was also something much broader: the instantiation of an entirely new human-machine relationship that, as examined at the outset of this chapter, is by now absolutely inseparable from all Chinese-language information technology. MingKwai marked the birth of “input.” Central to the meaning of “input,” we recall, is a technolinguistic condition in which the operator is not using the machine to type characters per se, but rather to find them. As distinct from the act of “typing,” the act of “inputting” is one in which an operator uses a keyboard or alternate input system to provide instructions or criteria to a protocol-governed, intermediary system, one that presents Chinese character candidates to the operators that fulfill said criteria. The specific characteristics of these criteria, be they phonetic or structural, are irrelevant to the core definition of input, as is the shape or design of the keyboard or device used in its operation. Just as calligraphy as a whole is not limited to any one brush, and just as movable type is not limited to any one particular typeface, input is not limited to any one particular kind of input system. Whether employing Lin’s symbology, the symbolic system of Cangjie input, or indeed pinyin as employed by Sougou, Google, and others, input constitutes a new mode of human-machine interaction that encompasses a practically infinite variety of potential approaches, protocols, and symbolic systems. As a specific device developed in the 1930s and debuted in the 1940s, then, MingKwai as a typewriter may indeed have failed; but as a new mode of inscription and human-machine interaction, MingKwai marked the transformation of Chinese information technology in ways that Lin Yutang himself could scarcely have foreseen.

  Notes

  1 Matthew Fuller, Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (Sagebrush Education Resources, 2003).

  2 What is more, users can customize the input experience in a variety of ways, effectively multiplying the number of potential input schemes. This simple fact becomes even more intriguing when we consider that, in English typing, there is but one way to enter the phrase in question: t-y-p-e-w-r-i-t-e-r.

  3 “Front Views and Profiles: Miss Yin at the Console,” Chicago Daily Tribune (October 10, 1945), 16.

  4 Ibid.

  5 By comparison, the Olivetti MS25 measured approximately 14.2 inches wide and 14.2 inches deep.

  6 “Chinese Project: The Lin Yutang Chinese Typewriter,” Smithsonian, n.d., multiple dates encompassed (1950), 1.

  7 Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

  8 Chen Youxun [陳有勳], “Report on a Comparison of Four-Corner Look-Up and Radical Look-Up (Sijiao haoma jianzifa yu bushou jianzifa de bijiao shiyan baogao) [四角號碼檢字法與部首檢字法的比較實驗報告],” Educational Weekly (Jiaoyu zhoukan) [教育周刊] 177 (1933): 14–20.

  9 “Among the difficulties of the Chinese language,” H.L. Wang argued in 1916, “the lack of an Index System is probably one of the most serious.” “A large collection of books will lose much of their usefulness unless they can be arranged in such wise that their contents and their locations be readily found.” John Wang (H.L. Huang), “Technical Education in China,” Chinese Students’ Monthly 11, no. 3 (January 1, 1916): 209–214.

  10 Were we to recreate this on film, a fitting technique might be vertigo zoom, the camera dollying away from the Chinese subject all while maintaining our focus on his visage. The impression produced would be one of a stationary subject around whom space itself warps and tunnels, conveying a moment of newly realized alienation.

  11 J.J.L. Duyvendak, “Wong’s System for Arranging Chinese Characters. The Revised Four-Corner Numeral System,” T’oung Pao 28, no. 1/2 (1931): 71–74.

  12 Cai Yuanpei [蔡元培], “An Introduction to Point/Vertical Stroke/Horizontal Stroke/Slanting Stroke Character Retrieval System (Jieshao dian zhi heng xie jianzifa) [介紹點直橫斜檢字法],” Modern Student (Xiandai xuesheng) [現代學生] (April 1, 1931), 1–8. See also “Methods Regarding the Character Retrieval Problem (Duiyu jianzifa wenti de banfa) [對於檢字法問題的辦法],” Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi) [東方雜誌] 20, no. 23 (1923): 97–100.

  13 Jiang Yiqian [蔣一前], History of the Development of Character Retrieval Systems in China and a Table of Seventy-Seven New Character Retrieval Systems (Zhongguo jianzifa yange shilüe ji qishiqi zhong xin jianzifa biao) [中國檢字法沿革史略及七十七種新檢字法表] (n.p.: Zhongguo suoyin she, 1933). Among these, at least twenty-six systems were based upon strokes.

  14 For more on Gao Mengdan, see Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai.

  15 Lin Yutang, “Explanation of Chinese Character Index (Hanzi suoyin zhi shuo­ming) [漢字索引制說明],” Xin Qingnian 4, no. 25 (1918): 128–135; Lin Yutang, “Last-Stroke Character Retrieval Method (Mobi jianzifa),” in Collected Essays on Linguistics (Yuyanxue luncong) [語言學論叢] (Taibei: Wenxing shudian gufen youxian gongsi, 1967), 284.

  16 Lin Yutang, “Explanation of Chinese Character Index,” 128–135; Lin Yutang, “Last-Stroke Character Retrieval Method (Mobi jianzifa),” 284.

  17 Jiang Yiqian, History of the Development of Character Retrieval Systems in China, 1.

  18 For a fascinating study of evolutionism and its place in modern Chinese thought, see Andrew F. Jones, Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

  19 Jiang Yiqian, History of the Development of Character Retrieval Systems in China, 1.

  20 Chen Lifu, Storm Clouds Over China: The Memoirs of Ch’en Li-fu, 1900–1993, ed. Sidney Chang and Ramon Myers (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 1994), 42.

  21 Ibid., 70.

  22 Ibid., 19–23, 71.

  23 As his exemplar to demonstrate the proliferation of specialized products, Chen Lifu cited the example of rose-scented soap.

  24 Chen Lifu, Storm Clouds Over China, 32.

  25 The Principle and Practice of Five-Stroke Indexing System for Chinese Characters (Wubi jianzifa de yuanli ji yingyong) [五筆檢字法的原理及應用] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1928), and How to Locate Clan Surnames (Xingshi su jianzifa) [姓氏速檢字法]. Following an emotional farewell dinner, and his transfer of responsibilities over the confidential section to Chen Bulei (1890–1948), Chen Lifu dedicated himself to, among other things, the refinement and development of his Five-Stroke system. He published The Principle and Practice of Five-Stroke Indexing System for Chinese Characters and How to Locate Clan Surnames—an application of his method to 500 Chinese surnames.

  26 Du Dingyou, “On the Psychology of How the Masses Search for Characters (Minzhong jianzi xinli lunlüe) [民眾檢字心理論略],” 340–350, in Selected Library Science Writings of Du Dingyou (Du Dingyou tushuguanxue lunwen xuanji) [杜定友圖書館學論文選集], ed. Qian Yaxin [钱亚新] and Bai Guoying [白国应] (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1988). Originally in Education and the Masses (Jiaoyu yu minzhong) [教育與民眾] 6, no. 9 (1925).

  27 Here, Du is referring to the code 0033, by which the character lian is categorized within the Four-Corner system.

  28 Du Dingyou, “On the Psychology of How the Masses Search for Char
acters,” 340–350.

  29 Incidentally, as an inveterate entrepreneur, Du Dingyou laid claim to having invented the penultimate character of this title: the single character 圕 he used to represent the polysyllabic term “tushuguan” (or “library”), conventionally written with three Chinese characters, 圖書館.

  30 Lin Yutang, “Features of the Invention,” Archives of John Day Co., Princeton University, box/folder 14416, call no. CO123 (c. October 14, 1931), 3. “Fact and Fiction: A Chinese Typewriter (Shishi feifei: Hanwen daziji) [是是非非:漢文打字機],” Nanhua wenyi [南華文藝] 1, no. 7/8 (1932): 103.

  31 Lin Yutang, “Features of the Invention,” 3.

  32 Lin Yutang received a special grant of $3,500 for his typewriter project from the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture. See Edward Hunter, “Increasing Program of China Foundation,” China Weekly Review (August 8, 1931), 379.

  33 Lin Yutang, “Features of the Invention,” 3.

  34 Ibid., 5.

  35 Ibid.

  36 Archives of the John Day Company, Princeton University, box 144, folder 6, no. C0123. The interior of Lin Yutang’s mechanism, he at first proposed, would be based upon the Hammond typewriter, which featured curved type sets. Lin proposed to outfit these mechanical type sets with his radicals, phonetics, and full-body characters, and then to build them up on the page. He would arrange these components onto 30 type bars, of 32 columns each, each column having 4 positions. “This bar and column indicates the group to which a character belongs.” In the case of left-right characters, the carriage would not advance. This he termed “The Mechanical Design.” Ibid., 4–5.

  37 Ibid., 2. Indeed, Lin Yutang’s relationship to McKean Jones on this particular account might be more than incidental. When we turn the pages of Lin’s 1931 letter over, we discover five ever-so-faint letters: RMcKJ, the signature of Robert McKean Jones, appearing next to a stamp that reads “Remington Typewriter Company.” Here, then, was the “master typographer” from Remington we met in chapter 4, who years earlier had patented his failed Chinese typewriter system premised upon the Chinese phonetic alphabet.