Traditional computers, at least as we understand them in the western world, and the programming of them were built around the standard QWERTY keyboard with letters. But how to you build a computer system when your language has tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet? Thomas Mullaney, Professor of Chinese History at Stanford, addresses this question in his new book, “The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age.” Based on 15 years of research, this illuminating story presents the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology and the impact it had on the Chinese language itself.
The challenges of putting the Chinese language onto a keyboard
Image courtesy of MIT Press
