In 1946, renowned author Lin Yutang filed a patent for a typewriter that printed Chinese characters. This is the MingKwai typewriter, with a reasonable number of keys. By pressing two keys, eight characters from thousands in the machine's mechanical hard drive would appear in the typewriter's "magic eye" window. Pressing a third key would select from those and print the character. It was the first Chinese typewriter with a workable keyboard. Lin sank his life savings into producing a prototype in the United States, but the typewriter did not appear to be a profit-making venture, and was never mass produced. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Revolution happened. Lin moved from China to Taiwan in 1966. The prototype MingKwai typewriter remained in New York and became lost.
Fast-forward to January of 2025, and Nelson Felix was cleaning out his wife's grandfather's basement. He found a strange typewriter with Chinese characters and posted it to the Facebook group What’s My Typewriter Worth? The comment section exploded with information about the historical significance of the find and offers to buy it. There were also pleas to donate the typewriter to museums in China or Taiwan. The typewriter ultimately ended up at Stanford University. Read the story of Lin, his typewriter, and how it stayed in a basement in Queens for decades, at Made in China. -via Metafilter
Get a closer look at the typewriter in this video.
