Chinese electro-mechanical typewriter

An electro-mechanical Chinese typewriter was invented and patented by Dr. Lin YuTang. The patent, No.2613795, was filed on April 17, 1946 by Dr. Lin. It was issued by the USPTO, on October 14, 1952.

Dr. Lin had a prototype machine custom-built by the Carl E. Krum Company, a small engineering-design consulting firm with an office in New York City. That multi-lingual typewriter was the size of conventional office typewriters of the 1940’s. It measured 14” x 18” x 9”. The Chinese type-faces fit on a drum about the size and shape of a large tomato juice can. There was a “magic eye” mounted in the center of the keyboard which was about the size and dimensions of a 1990’s palm pilot. When the typist pressed several keys, according to a system Dr.Lin devised for his dictionary of the Chinese Language, a choice of Chinese characters appeared. In order to select a Chinese character, the typist could then press a“master” key, similar to what today would be called a function key. The selection could be printed directly on to a standard piece of office stationery. The typewriter had the capacity to type 7000 whole characters. It could type “words” beyond the first 7000 by making combinations of characters, attaining a theoretical total of 90,000 words.

Dr. Lin devised a system for a “Chinese alphabet” consisting of 30 distinct geometric shapes or strokes. These became “letters” by which to “alphabetize” Chinese characters. Dr. Lin broke away from the traditional radicals and stroke order method of writing and categorizing Chinese characters. He “invented” an entirely new way of seeing and categorizing words in the Chinese language. He also worked with Y.R. Chao, another linguist and scholar, on a method of recording the sounds and tones of Chinese. Known as GR or gwoyeu Romantzyh, this is a system for writing Mardarin Chinese with the Roman alphabet. It pioneered a way for indicating the tones of the Chinese language by varying the way words were spelled out in Roman letters.

Dr. Lin’s great life-work was a Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage which was published in 1972 by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It can serve as a standard reference book for anyone who wants to translate English into Chinese. It is a dictionary that non-Chinese speakers could use simply to find the definition of Chinese words. Furthermore, readers of English could refer to the Lin Yutang Dictionary to identify and find the meaning of Chinese characters and Japanese kanji. It can be utilized without a knowledge of Chinese pronunciation or knowledge of the traditional system of radical and stroke order used for writing Chinese. It can also be used to get examples of correct usage and Chinese pronunciations.

Dr. Lin called his machine, the MingKwai. A direct translation into English of “ming kwai” is clear and quick. He wanted the MingKwai promoted as “The Only Chinese Typewriter Designed for Everybody’s Use.” In a simple office typewriter was the tool which could help build bridges to overcome the language barrier. The world would come to really know and appreciate the wisdom of China, his country and his people. China itself would no longer be a place isolated from the world. In the mid-20th century, China was generally considered a “backward” county. It had become a “have-not nation.” Dr. Lin wanted the typewriter to do for China what Gutenberg’s printing press did for Europe. China would modernize. The typewriter with its innovations for writing and printing Chinese was his legacy, a gift to China and to everyone all over the world.

The typewriter was never produced commercially. Lin’s daughter, Lin Tai-Yi wrote in her biography of her father that, much to her dismay, on the very day she was supposed to demonstrate the machine to executives from the Remington typewriter company, she and her father couldn’t get it up and running. Although they got it fixed in time for the press conference the next day, it was to no avail. By 1945, Dr. Lin found himself deeply in debt. China became engulfed in civil war and fell under the domination of the Communists. In 1947 Dr. Lin paid off income taxes he owed to the IRS and was allowed to go abroad. He took a position with UNESCO in Paris.

= Bibliography =

Bliven, Bruce Jr. The Wonderful Writing Machine. New York: Random House, 1954.

Lin, Tai-Yi. “My Father, Lin Yutang,” Reader’s Digest (December 1990) p:161-191.

Lin, Yutang, Lin Yutang’s Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage. Honh Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1972.