Mingkwai Typewriter Wiki

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> This (Mingkwai Typewriter) is my present to Chinese people. -Lin Yutang
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Mingkwai Chinese typewriter (明快中文打字机 / 明快中文打字機), which the name Mingkwai stands for "Clean and Fast", is the first and only Chinese typewriter uses keyboard in history. Its model is first manufactured at May 22, 1947.

Mingkwai typewriter has 14 inches (for about 36 cm) wide, 18 inches (46 cm) deep and 9 inches (23 cm) tall. which is slightly larger than Western typewriters. It's first and only Chinese typewriter using the keyboard of 74 keys but pressing 3 keys to type a character, which could type 90,000 characters. A skilled typist can use it to type 50 characters per minute. Even a person who doesn't know many characters can reach 20 characters per minute.

Mingkwai TypewriterLin YutangAnother View of Mingkwai Typewriter with exposing major mechanismsFeatures of Mingkwai TypewriterNew Typewriter Conquers Chinese Symbols
Its inventor, Lin Yutang (林语堂/ 林語堂 ), known as a well writer, was born in 1895 at Fujian Province, Qing Dynasty. He had eagerness on inventing since his childhood.

Before Mingkwai typewriter was invented, there was already another kind of Chinese typewriter models. This kind of typewriter model invented by Shu Zhendong at 1915 was directly mapped about 3,000 characters on a broad plate so that it requires typist to find characters by using two hands instead of ten fingers on this plate and try to remember them all, which of these led its much slower typing speed of 20 characters per minute. For this, Lin made a determination to invent an easy-use and less-learning-and-training typewriter. He took 31 years, from 1916 to 1947, made the success of Mingkwai Typewriter.

Four years after this model had been manufactured, it has been taken away by Mergenthaler Company. However, even if it was invented, no any company wanted to make a mass production of this kind of expensive model under the unstable market led by wars, so there was only a model from the beginning time manufactured. Unfortunately, in 1966, this only model was deserted. Since then, Mingkwai typewriter has been faded away from people's sight.

At the end of 2021, a netizen called adore43 republished some important information about Mingkwai typewriter so that it gradually spread into people's view again and attracted other netizens' eagerness. Mingkwai Typewriter Wiki is also created under this context. Now it is forming more and more achievements around the aim of here.

## Important articles

InstructionsKeyboardKeys and PartsMingkwai Chinese TypewriterCharacters TableRelated Patents/Chinese Typewriter

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