A Typewriter For The Chinese Language,

with 5,400 Chinese characters, plus letters of the alphabet and punctuation marks,

was always going to be difficult to produce, have said that we featured a typewriter that could type Japanese, Chinese, and English as well, but what this post is about is the IBM electric typewriter, photographs courtesy IBM, to use it the typist had to depress four of the 36 keys at once, which meant memorizing four-digit codes for the needed characters, the young woman who typed on the machine made it look easy. How did she do it? And who was she, anyway? Tom Mullaney spent years trying to find her, and after he did, spent years getting an interview, Lois Lew is now 95 years old, She arrived in the US for an arranged marriage as an undereducated 16-year-old, you can read the fascinating story, and it is, of how Lew became the star of IBM's campaign to sell the Chinese typewriter at Fast Company, if you do go to the link, the video explains how the machine is used, and it is not that easy!