For the love of God, finally a web site that can (hopefully) answer a question that has burdoned me for years…What does a Chinese typewriter look like? As far as I know, the Chinese write with symbols that represent words, so does that mean the typewriter has like 100,000 keys?
Well, Cecil’s column referred to computers and not to typewriters.
Typewriters have been replaced by computers pretty much everywhere but there was a time, BC (Before Computers) when people actually used them.
In the book Speaking of Chinese, page 126, you can see a photo of a chinese typewriter.
It explains that the typewriter was never widespread in China (for reasons which are obvious) but they did exist.
Well, that’s as much as I’m willing to do. I’f you’d like to know more, get the book.
This reminds me very little of the fact that for many years and quite possibly even to this day, the world’s most complex mechanical device was a hot lead Chinese linotype machine.
Extra points for anyone who gets the title line.
First of all, you misspelled “ETAOINSHRDLU.”
The answer is, you can’t spell etaoinshrdlu. A Chinese keyboard isn’t like an English linotype keyboard. There is no single keypress that produces a character, chinese keyboards use a complex system of combination keypresses, it usually takes 3 or 4 keys to produce one kanji. You can’t just do what linotype operators did, zip your finger down the keyboard row that read etaoinshrdlu to produce a slug.
BTW, I dispute that the world’s most complex mechanical device was the chinese lino. I betcha the Strasbourg Clock (which will keep accurate time and date until the year 10,000AD) is much more complex. But this is a topic for another thread.
Cecil covered this in More of the Straight Dope What’s the origin of the mysterious phrase “etaoin shrdlu”? – you can probably send him his prize via the Chicago Reader.
Slug’s idea of what a Chinese typewriter looks like is online at http://www.straightdope.com/art/1995/951208.gif , although this may or may not be historically accurate.
