The Chinese Typewriterepub,mobi,azw3格式电子书下载，作者：Thomas S. Mullaney-读书派

Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters -- in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter.

The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an arrangement method that was the first instance of "predictive text."

Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.

Thomas S. Mullaney is Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China.

11-12

这本书不仅讲了中文打字机的百年故事，更重要的是它展现了一种新的历史书写范式。中国现代科技史领域的作品主题虽千奇百怪，但是它们的叙事和论点却大同小异：在帝国主义的空前压力下，各式各样的人在中国的土地上完成了外来科技的“本土化”和传统科技“现代化”，诞生出一批既不同于西方、也不同于传统的新东西，它们生根发芽，展现出一种具有中国特色的现代性。这一叙事试图挖掘这些被掩盖的中国特色，通过它解构西方中心的现代性。然而正如作者所说，并不是所有中国出现的事情都要肩负英雄的解构主义角色，就像中文打字机这个怪胎，它并没有成功，没有像西文打字机那样改写历史，但是这段不断和失败抗衡、不断和悖论较劲的故事本身就反映了现代化的过程。读书如读人，前导师对于人生的理解通过他这本书可见一斑。

东木

01-22

大开眼界题目是中文打字机但是实际上讨论的是十九世纪以来以表意为基础的中文是如何适应以字母为基础的西方语言/信息技术在三种路径（常用字common usage、组合字combinatorialism、和替代字surrogacy）下对应民国时期三种不同设计的中文打字机（分别是周厚坤/商务印书馆舒式打字机，祁暄设计的打字机，林语堂的明快打字机）很好看的书和作者上一本书一样属于STS的路子（上一本英语世界里这样好看的书还是Just One Child）但是可读性很强没有太多抽象的概念论从史出受众应该远远超过历史类读者核心问题是中文与“现代化”与信息化的关系赶紧出中文版最好再配上书里面打字机的大图！

Orpheus

07-27

两点印象深刻的：1. technolinguistics：打字机样式决定了语言的发展；2. 毛时代的标语定义了中文打字机的键盘

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