Tulsa daily world. [volume] (Tulsa, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1905-1919, 1915-04-11
INVENTS CHINESE TYPEWRITER
Student From tho Orient Builds MAJ
chine of i,2OO Characters.

Stenographers may be interested in
learning that there IL new sort OF
! typewriter which has Just been in.
| vented by young student In the en-.
gineering department OF New York
university. The machine Is different
from the typewriterS familiar TO the
average New Yorker In several re-
spects. For instance. the STANDARD"
keyboard has 20 letters and in most
cases about a dozen keys devoted to
figures and punctuation marks,
while the new machine has 1890
characters in all and only three
keys.
one Of the three keys Is n back
Spacer, another the space key. and
th" third is the key with which the
AGO characters are struck. II IN pos.
slblc. according to the inventor, 10
make moro than 1920 characters by
combinations OF radicals" or base
characters can be made by the ma
Characters can be male by the ma.
chine, the inventor said.
That stenographers ambitious 60
operate the new typewriter will find
, their task little difficult az first, at
least. was Indicated by the fact that
! " required two hours TO write the
first letter typed by the machine. This
letter contained approximately one
hundred words. but the operator was
Unfamiliar with the 4,200 keys
Stenographefs Of this city who do
noS work in export or import houses
dealing with China. however. are not
apt Ia be called on to memorize the
new keyboard for some time.
The machine Is said to be the first
Chinese typewriter ever invented.
Ileuen Chi, the student inventor
demonstrated the method by which
the machine Is worked. He conceived
the idea that a. typewriter could be
made 20 write Chinese while he was
az his home In Southern China three
years ago. he said. lie began a study
OF the Chinese dictionary at once to
isolate the radical or base charac-
Sers of the words. In most cases one
character represents a whole word IN
Chinese, though, according to Heuen
Chi, thousands Of these characters
are made up of simpler characters
which alone represent words them
selves. lie continued studying the
forms Of the language during a year
and a half he spent at London uni
versity. and began work on his type
writer.
Heuen came to this country as a
government student and at the
prompting Of Chinese officials who
had become interested I'm his scheme
took up the study Of engineering at
New York university and continued
to work on the invention. He COM
pleted the model a short time ago,
and has patented It in this country,
China and Japan, for it also writes
japanese, which, he said, is quite
similar to Chinese.
The model of the Chinese type
writer which the inventor made of
the first materials that came to hand,
consists Of two cylinders five inches
n diameter and about ten inches
long, one of which slides on a base
similar to that Of the ordinary type
writer IL Is built into a wooden
structure of the soapboX variety. on
one OF the cylinders is q copper plate
containing the 1900 minute char
acters which the machine prints. The
other contains Il paper copy of the
same characters, and is used as a
guide to the location OF each char
acter
The stamping process Is much the
same as that employed in the little
tin typewriters made for children's
toys. The operator turns the copper
cylinder until the desired character
is in front Of a key. then he hits the
key and the character Is printed, after
which the turning process is gone
through again. At present this Is
done by hand, though the inventor
said he expected to be able td attach
mechanism which would do Il more
duickly-New York Times.