Before QWERTY, the Options were Ingenious and Strange: The Forgotten History of Chinese Keyboards

Abstract

Today, typing in Chinese works by converting QWERTY keystrokes into Chinese characters via a software interface, known as an input method editor. But this was not always the case. Thomas S. Mullaney's new book, The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age, published by the MIT Press, unearths the forgotten history of Chinese input in the 20th century. In this article, which was adapted from an excerpt of the book, he details the varied Chinese input systems of the 1960s and 1970s that renounced QWERTY altogether. “This will destroy China forever,” a young Taiwanese cadet thought as he sat in rapt attention. The renowned historian Arnold J. Toynbee was on stage, delivering a lecture at Washington and Lee University on “A Changing World in Light of History.” The talk plowed the professor's favorite field of inquiry: the genesis, growth, death, and disintegration of human civilizations, immortalized in his magnum opus A Study of History. Tonight's talk threw the spotlight on China.