Typewriters in the Pre-Electric Age

Typewriters did, in fact, exist in the days preceding electricity, and people speaking English had it fairly easily even then, considering the sparse number of characters in the language. But what about the Japanese? What did they do, with their thousands upon thousands of characters?

The answer is the kanji typewriter (和文タイプライター or 邦文タイプライター), which was invented by Kyota Sugimoto in 1915. This invention was deemed so important that it was selected as one of the ten greatest Japanese inventions by the Japanese Patent Office during their 100th anniversary celebrations in 1985.

Believe me, it was a very complicated process. I mean, of course I don't know, for a bevy of reasons, but according to the blog post I checked out, it was extremely cumbersome but a technological innovation nonetheless. There are more pictures and in-depth explanations of its function on the site itself.

[img srce=miya (wiki commons)
Japanese Typewriters - GT! Blog