Chinese mechanical typewriter
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I didn't think one could exists, yet many apparently do. This article focus on a specimen called the MingKwai. The inventor Lin Yutang figured out a way to mechanically use 72 keys to type out thousands of Chinese characters. (The biggest Chinese dictionary I am aware of catalogs 50k+ characters; most people believe that about 3k+ characters are enough for day-to-day use. So a typewriter would at need to handle 3k+ characters to be practical.) The inventor bankrupted himself developing it after failing to sell it to Remington. It's recent been sold to Stanford's museum.
One of these days, I hope I will get to see and try my hands on a mechanical Chinese typewriter.
