The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press)
暫譯: 中文打字機：歷史 (MIT Press)
Thomas S. Mullaney
- 出版商: MIT
- 出版日期: 2017-08-08
- 售價: $1,610
- 貴賓價: 9.5 折 $1,530
- 語言: 英文
- 頁數: 504
- 裝訂: Hardcover
- ISBN: 0262036363
- ISBN-13: 9780262036368
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商品描述
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.
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.
商品描述(中文翻譯)
中文書寫是以字符為基礎的，這是世界上唯一一種既不是字母表也不是音節的主要書寫系統。多年來，中文書寫語言遭遇了假定的字母普遍主義，這種主義以摩斯電碼、盲文、速記、排版機、打孔卡、文字處理以及其他以拉丁字母為基礎的系統的形式出現。本書正是關於這些遭遇——特別是數千個漢字與打字機及其 QWERTY 鍵盤之間的對抗。托馬斯·穆拉尼（Thomas Mullaney）描述了一系列引人入勝的實驗、原型、失敗和成功，這些都是在追求可行的中文打字機的百年探索中發生的。
穆拉尼告訴我們，最早的中文打字機是大眾想像的產物， sensational accounts 描述了有著五千個鍵的十二英尺鍵盤。第一台實際建造的中文打字機是由一位基督教傳教士發明的，他根據常用字來組織字符（但將不太常用的“耶穌”字推廣到常用字的水平）。隨後出現了專為中國辦公室使用而製造的打字機，以及培訓“打字女孩”和“打字男孩”的打字學校。更晚一些是由上海計算器和打字機廠生產的“雙鴿”打字機，這是毛澤東時期的首選打字機。在這個時期，文員和秘書們嘗試了不同的方式來組織他們的字符托盤，發明了一種排列方法，這是“預測文本”的第一次實例。
今天，經過一個多世紀對字母的抵抗，不僅漢字依然存在，還形成了充滿活力的中文信息技術的語言基礎。《中文打字機》不僅僅是一本“物件歷史”，而是探討技術變革和全球通信的廣泛問題，展示了這一切是如何發生的。
