Keyboard - Typewriter in the past

[Weronika]

I'm wondering how do you use keyboard now in China? What is the main rule? Can you type quickly chinese characters?

How was it when there wasn't PC, just typewriter?

[HashiriKata]

How was it when there wasn't PC, just typewriter?

I remember using it in my previous incarnation. It was a huge & heavy monster with metal plates of thousands of characters on them, and which only typing specialists can operate. The typewriter is definitely another invention by the devils to demonstrate how inadequate the Chinese language is.

[skylee]

Take a look at this 中文鉛字打字機 ->

This and this talk about how it worked ->

中文打字機最初的形式為一個約一張A2大小的盤上，排滿了鉛字。鉛字的排列次序跟報館的習慣一樣，按部首畫數排列。打字員首先要在鉛字盤上用一個小鉗把鉛字鉗起，再按一鍵時，小鉗就會舉起鉛字，隔著色帶印在紙上。中文打字機的特色，在於打字機能夠配合當時中國人書寫習慣，允許文字打直排。當打完一行按回車鍵之後，又會自動捲回頁首，並跳往下一行。

中文打字机通常为整字文字打字机，由机身、机架、字盘、拖板、横格器、直格器、色带、辊筒架、辊筒等部件组成（见图）。字盘可容纳常用汉字2400多个，另有备用字3600多个。打字时，机身上的字锤通过联动机构从字盘上抽取字母，然后敲击固定在辊筒上的色带或蜡纸上，后自动复位，落到原来的字格孔内。

[Xiao Kui]

Hi Weronika,

Are you the same person as zozovera? I heard there was a big conference abt learning and teaching Chinese in Budapest a week ago, it was on the CCTV-news - I hope you had the chance to go.

I'm wondering how do you use keyboard now in China? What is the main rule? Can you type quickly chinese characters?

Have you learned how to input Chinese yet? You can do it with a regular keyboard - that's what we use in China. You just need to have Chinese fonts installed on your computer - they come with windows, and there are a few threads in chinese-forums that mention how to do that.

Then you can either use Microsoft IME, download another program or use an online program to input Chinese. You just type the pinyin and the computer shows you all the characters that use that pinyin - then you type a number to choose which character you want. If I type wo the computer gives me a choice between 我，握，窝，卧，涡, etc. and then I just type 1 because I want #1 我 Some pinyin, such as ji has 160 different characters, but the computer only shows you 10 at a time, and it shows you the 10 most common ones first, so it's easy.. There are a lot of other input methods as well, such as wubi, which uses stroke order.

[bashFish]

Oiii, that's really amazing! I can't believe that this saves time?

Someone used one of those "machines"? If so, how much time did you spend in a letter?

Unthinkable..

[jparry]

Hi

If you have seen the Wan Kar Wai 王家衛 film

"In the Mood for Love", then you can see the main

character, Mr Chow, using one in his job as a

journalist. It looks pretty slow. Thank goodness

for the PC!

Jon

[Weronika]

hm, it is so interesting. I saw Wong Kar Wai's film, but I didn't remember this.

Xiao Kui: yes I'm zozovera. But - thanks to roddy - we changed my name . I'm very angry because I didn't hear about that conference (or nobody invited me).

I thought that you have a special "chinese keyboard" with radicals on it or something like that.

[HashiriKata]

Someone used one of those "machines"? If so, how much time did you spend in a letter?

It depends on how well you remember the position of each of the 3000 or so characters on the plate. Pretty easy!

[holger]

Hello,

I was just trying to find out more about the origin of this machine from the first photo Skylee posted above because actually I saw the same one few days ago in some attic.

Here is a clear shot: pic. Can someone read the name of the brand? :huh: Wikipedia says its Shuang Ge but i'm not sure which characters: 双鸽 ? Could also be 又又后包...

Here's another photo.

And, yes the US Patent of this very same (and very nerdy) gadget, where the machine is only an aspect of the "invention" to have a binary bridge to written chinese.

[roddy]

Given the image, I'm pretty sure that'll be 双鸽. There's some info in Chinese if you Google 双鸽 打字机

[holger]

Hi,

thanks Admin. I didn't google my own suggestion.

However, it seems hard to find out more about that company.

Further it's kind of komisch that someone registered a patent for a mechanical device processing chinese characters in binary, in 1978, no?

regards,

[jbradfor]

More information, and even some videos using it!

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1548

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3092

The main tray — which is like a typesetter's font of lead type — has about two thousand of the most frequent characters. Two thousand characters are not nearly enough for literary and scholarly purposes, so there are also a number of supplementary trays from which less frequent characters may be retrieved when necessary. What is even more intimidating about a Chinese typewriter is that the characters as seen by the typist are backwards and upside down!

[yialanliu]

First of all, memorizing the locations isn't that hard for 3k characters.

Americans are intimidated by memorizing whereas rote memorization is not a big deal. I mean in Classical Chinese to get the jinshi degree, memorizing half a million words with about 10million words of commentary read was the norm.

Anyways, as was mentioned in the links, 10-12 character/words per minute was possible which isn't too bad compared to old school block printing.

The better point however is that these plates are still used today to a degree. In China when you goto a bank or government office. Sometimes they have your chinese name broken down by numbers which each number representing a different character Yes they have a book but for common ones, they just know it off the top of their head.

[jbradfor]

I agree that memorization is not "hard". [i also agree that Americans are loath / look down on rote memorization, but that's another topic.] But it is very time consuming, and the effect of all that time learning is impressive. 70 characters / minutes -- that's a tad over 1 per second. I would be very impressed to see it done. I wouldn't think they person is necessarily a genius, but rather be impressed at all the time they spent to memorize so much.

[yialanliu]

Wiki said 70, but real people who saw only claims 10-12. Regardless, it's still pretty good. Also, it is possible to take a middle number as both might be inflated/deflated when people are trying to make a point.