“Since the turn of the 20th century, inventors across the globe have attempted the seemingly impossible feat of transposing a vast, non-alphabetic language onto a workable keyboard.  Beginning with a large, tray-shaped apparatus invented by a Chinese man living in San Francisco in the early 1900s, the evolution of the Chinese typewriter has moved at a fast pace, resulting in machines made during the 1950s and 60s that were so complex that some argue they paved the way for modern computing.”

Historians discover that Chinese typewriter is no joke (Images from The Google and Flickr, because the original post doesn’t allow Tumbling. Drupal borks it?)