See also the book, "The Chinese Typewriter: A History" By Thomas S. Mullaney [1] for more on the history of Japanese and Chinese typewriters.<p>[1] <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese-typewriter" rel="nofollow">https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese-typewriter</a>
Interesting article. There's also one on how typing Japanese is done on modern computers:<p><a href="https://blog.gatunka.com/2009/09/12/using-a-japanese-ime/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.gatunka.com/2009/09/12/using-a-japanese-ime/</a><p>It all sounds horribly complicated, although it may be one of those procedures that's easier to do than to describe.<p>These kind of writing systems really don't seem suited to being input via a conventional keyboard, even with software assistance.<p>I wonder if things will change [or have changed] with the advent of touch screens and styluses? [stylii?] which would allow the characters to be written manually, using finger or stylus and then have the software convert this to the appropriate typed character?
Anyone has a link for some trivia info about speed, in words per minute, for a 1915 / ~1930 Japanese writer using such typewriter vs. an English one?
Another article with some pics from 2016 about early Japanese typewriters<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23898649" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23898649</a>
The “related posts” section has some incredible interesting headlines, one of which is already also on the front page of HN right now.<p>Seems like the whole blog is worth looking through