The fascinating untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and
revolutionized the world of computing. A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How
can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a
device? In The Chinese Computer Thomas S. Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox and in
doing so discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new
epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years
of research this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of
electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in
the present day. Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese
language computing technology showing the development of electronic Chinese input
methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric
symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way
Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM
MIT the CIA the Pentagon the Taiwanese military and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese
establishment to name a few and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese
language computing. Finally he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the
hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing
revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases enabling it to achieve a
meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe. An eminently engaging and
artfully told history The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture
informs computing and how computing in turn shapes culture.
