The Chinese Typewriter

by Thomas Mullaney

  20 Ibid. Another influential scholar in this regard was Samuel Dyer (1804–1843). Dyer was born in Greenwich in 1804, the fourth son of John Dyer, the secretary of the Royal Hospital for Seamen. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he read classics, mathematics, and law at Trinity Hall, but later reached out to the London Missionary Society in the summer of 1824, offering himself up for the cause of missionary work in “heathen lands.” That summer, he entered the seminary and commenced his studies under the tutelage of David Bogue—including the study of Chinese. Dyer was ordained in February 1827, and in less than one month was dispatched to Malacca with his wife, Maria. Arriving in Penang in August, he promptly set about studying the Hokkien dialect. At a time when the printing of Chinese was almost exclusively lithographic and xylographic, with certain notable exceptions (Morrison’s dictionary was printed in Macao using metal movable types), Dyer was committed to the creation of a movable metal type font for Chinese. See Ibrahim bin Ismail, “Samuel Dyer and His Contributions to Chinese Typography,” Library Quarterly 54, no. 2 (April 1984): 157–169.

  21 Jean-Pierre Guillaume Pauthier, Foe Koue Ki ou Relation des royaumes bouddhiques (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1836); Jean-Pierre Guillaume Pauthier, Le Ta-Hio ou la Grande Étude, ouvrage de Confucius et de ses disciples, en chinois, en latin et en français, avec le commentaire de Tchou-hi (Paris: n.p., 1837).

  22 Jean-Pierre Guillaume Pauthier, Chine ou Description historique, géographique et littéraire de ce vaste empire, d’après des documents chinois, first part (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, Fils, et Cie, 1838).

  23 Les caractères de l’Imprimerie Nationale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1990), 114–117.

  24 See Châh Nameh, sous le titre: Le livre des rois par Aboul’kasim Firdousi, publié, traduit et commenté par M. Jules Mohl, 7 vols. (Paris: Jean Maisonneuve, 1838–1878); Arthur Christian, Débuts de l’Imprimerie en France (Paris: G. Roustan and H. Champion, 1905).

  25 Medhurst, China, 557.

  26 Ibid., 558.

  27 Marcellin Legrand, “Tableau des 214 clefs et leurs variants” (Paris: Plon Frères, 1845); L. Léon de Rosny, Table des principales phonétiques chinoises disposée suivant une nouvelle méthode permettant de trouver immédiatement le son des caractères quelles que soient les variations de prononciation, et adaptée spécialement au Kouan-hoa ou dialecte mandarinique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie, Libraire-Éditeurs pour les Langues Orientales, Étrangères et Comparées, 1857).

  28 Medhurst, China, 556.

  29 Ibid., 558.

  30 Robert E. Harrist and Wen Fong, The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection (Princeton: Art Museum, Princeton University in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 4.

  31 Ibid., 152.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Adapted from Yee Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy: An Introduction to Its Aesthetics and Techniques (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973 [1938]), 163–164.

  34 See John Hay, “The Human Body as a Microcosmic Source of Macrocosmic Values in Calligraphy,” in Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas Kasulis, Roger Ames, and Wimal Dissanayake (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 179–212; Amy McNair, “Engraved Calligraphy in China: Recension and Reception,” Art Bulletin 77, no. 1 (March 1995): 106–114; Craig Clunas on categorization in Maxwell Hearn and Judith Smith, eds., Arts of the Sung and Yuan (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996); Richard Curt Kraus, Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

  35 Twelfth Annual Report of the American Tract Society (Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1837), 63.

  36 Chuang Tzu: The Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 47.

  37 Twelfth Annual Report of the American Tract Society, 62–63. Characters Formed by the Divisible Type Belonging to the Chinese Mission of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Macao: Presbyterian Press, 1844). As with Pauthier and Legrand’s font, it contained both whole and partial characters, the latter kind being further subcategorized into the same two groups as in the Frenchmen’s work: “horizontally divided” partials and “vertically divided” partials. “Chinese Divisible Type,” Chinese Repository 14 (March 1845): 129.

  38 This number might seem large on its own, and yet it fell well within the range of other, whole-character Chinese fonts from the era. Indeed, if we reflect back on the work of William Gamble and others, Legrand and Pauthier’s proposal was modest by comparison. More significantly, unlike whole-character fonts, divisible type would not be confined to the one-to-one, sort-to-character ratio inherent in conventional printing. With these three thousand full and partial characters, Legrand and Pauthier’s font could compose an estimated 22,841 characters in total. “Chinese Divisible Type,” 124–129, 129. Unlike Legrand’s divisible type, which included both horizontally and vertically divided characters, Beyerhaus opted instead to focus exclusively on vertically divisible characters, presumably to simplify the system. This font was sufficient to prepare full Chinese translations of the Old and New Testaments, which Beyerhaus prepared for the American Missionary Society. See George Dodd, The Curiosities of Industry and the Applied Sciences (London: George Routledge and Co., 1858), 4.

  39 Annales des empereurs du Japon was begun by the Dutch merchant and Orientalist Isaac Titsingh (1745–1812), and continued by the French Orientalist Abel Rémusat (1788–1832) (Nihon Ōdai Ichiran 日本王代一覧). Relation des royaumes bouddhiques was the French translation of the Foguo ji by Rémusat. In 1837, further news was reported of Walter Lowrie’s intention to purchase a complete set of Legrand’s Chinese font in his station as secretary of the Western Foreign Missionary Society. In 1844, Legrand went on to exhibit his Chinese punches in Paris, 4,600 in all, capable of producing all Chinese characters. By 1859, the Presbyterian Board of Missions in New York adopted Beyerhaus’s “beautiful font” for some of its Chinese-language publications. See Twelfth Annual Report of the American Tract Society, 62–33; Ferrier and Owen, Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 409; and Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1848), 604.

  40 Ferrier and Owen, Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 452.

  41 Medhurst, China, 557. In 1854, Legrand’s Chinese font appeared in Stanislas Hernisz’s curious primer, A Guide to Conversation in the English and Chinese Languages for the Use of Americans and Chinese in California and Elsewhere. Hernisz paid thanks to Legrand in his preface, adding: “It is perhaps not the least interesting fact of our times that Chinese books should be printed in China with types manufactured ‘beyond the ocean,’ by an ‘outside barbarian’!” See Stanislas Hernisz, A Guide to Conversation in the English and Chinese Languages for the Use of Americans and Chinese in California and Elsewhere (Boston: John P. Jewett and Co., 1854). For Pauthier’s part, evidently he was pleased, returning to work with Legrand again in 1858 for his L’Inscription syro-chinoise.

  42 Comte d’Escayrac de Lauture, On the Telegraphic Transmission of Chinese Characters (Paris: E. Brière, 1862).

  43 Ibid., 6.

  44 Also inspired by this trip, Escayrac de Lauture would later publish his multivolume Mémoires sur la Chine (1864–1865).

  45 “Le télégraphe veut une langue plus brève, intelligible à tous les peuples. Je vais montrer que cette langue n’est point une utopie; que non-seulement son emploi est possible, mais encore qu’il est facile, indiqué, nécessaire.” Comte d’Escayrac de Lauture, Grammaire du télégraphe: Histoire et lois du langage, hypothèse d’une langue analy­tique et méthodique, grammaire analytique universelle des signaux (Paris: J. Best, 1862 [August]), 9.

  46 Yakup Bektas, “The Sultan’s Messenger: Cultural Constructions of Ottoman Telegraphy, 1847–1880,” Technology and Culture 41 (2000): 206.


  47 Ibid., 669–696.

  48 Between a 4- and 5-unit pulse sequence, one faced an increase of anywhere from 25 to 75 percent in the time required for transmission. Because of its inefficiency, this five-unit code area—which contained 25 or 32 additional spaces—was originally limited to numerals and special symbols (including punctuation). Connections to the English language went further than this, however, and included subtle considerations of the particular types of ambiguities that might surface during the transmission of letters. Within Morse code, the allocation of pulse patterns also took into account the co-occurrence of letters, and the ambiguities that could arise if a sequence of two originally distinct patterns was partitioned incorrectly, thereby leading to erroneous transcription. Confronted with the most common two-letter sequences (“digrams”), then, the pulse patterns of such letters had to be sufficiently distinct so as to prevent misreading, even though this meant allocating pulse patterns whose energetic efficiency fell short of what a given letter’s frequency might otherwise demand.

  49 Convention télégraphique internationale de Paris, révisée à Vienne (1868) et Règlement de service international (1868)—Extraits de la publication: Documents de la Conférence Télégraphique Internationale de Vienne (Vienna: Imprimerie Impériale et Royale de la Cour et de l’Etat, 1868), 58.

  50 Convention télégraphique internationale de Saint-Pétersbourg et Règlement et tarifs y annexés (1875). Extraits de la publication—Documents de la Conférence Télégraphique Internationale de St-Pétersbourg: Publiés par le Bureau International des Administrations Télégraphiques (Bern: Imprimerie Rieder & Simmen, 1876), 22; Convention télégraphique internationale de Berlin (1885): Publiés par le Bureau International des Admi­nistrations Télégraphiques (Bern: Imprimerie Rieder & Simmen, 1886, 15.

  51 These would not be available, however, to those using “Hughes Signals,” an alternate system to Morse.

  52 Convention télégraphique internationale et règlement et tarifs y annexés révision de Londres (1903) (London: The Electrician Printing and Publishing Co., 1903), 16.

  53 Daniel Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). See chapter 11.

  54 W. Bull, “A Short History of the Shanghai Station” (Shanghai: n.p., 1893) [handwritten manuscript], Cable and Wireless Archive DOC/EEACTC/12/10, 4.

  55 For a fascinating study of telegraphy in its early years, and the radical visions that accompanied its emergence, see Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  56 Escayrac de Lauture, Grammaire du Télégraphe, 4.

  57 The original reads, “langue des faits et des chiffres, langue sans poésie, planant cependant au-dessus des vulgarités de la vie commune.” “Le discours est comme un calcul avec des mots: il faut trouver l’algèbre de ce calcul, imparfait comme chaque idiome; il faut trouver la commune mesure de la pensée et des discours humains.” Ibid., 4, 8.

  58 The original reads: “le catalogue des idées principales constitue la nomenclature: c’est comme la matière et le corps du discours.” Ibid., 4, 15.

  59 Actions too would be categorized into fundamental and secondary terms. As Escayrac de Lauture captured it: “Now that we have given form to the body of language, we may now give it life.” Beginning with the principal idea of “movement,” one could modify it to achieve directionality (to go, to come, to circulate, to traverse), instrumentality (to carry, to strike, to divide), and any number of other variations. Neither tense nor person would be required in Escayrac de Lauture’s system, moreover, with conjugation and declension being replaced with a further set of modifying protocols. Ibid., 12. The natural world could be classified in comparable ways, Escayrac de Lauture contended. Whether vegetables, chemicals, mammals, reptiles, mollusks, fish, or otherwise, all entities within the natural world could be captured using abbreviated letter codes. Each letter within the system would carry significance. An initial consonant in a sequence could be used to indicate Linnaean classes, with the subsequent vowel then indicating Linnaean orders and suborders. For geographic locations, latitude and longitude could be used, with individual mountains demarcated by their summits, rivers by their sources, and oceans by their central points. See Escayrac de Lauture, Grammaire du Télégraphe, 11–12.

  60 “Sans connaître un seul de ces mots, on pourrait, à l’aide d’un simple vocabulaire, établir avec certitude le sens d’une phrase.” Ibid., 15.

  61 “… serait plus propre qu’aucune langue connue aux communications internationales d’un certain ordre.” Ibid., 15.

  62 Bull, “A Short History of the Shanghai Station,” 7–10.

  63 Zhu Jiahua [Chu Chia-hua], China’s Postal and Other Communications Services (Shanghai: China United Press, 1937), 149.

  64 Kurt Jacobsen, “A Danish Watchmaker Created the Chinese Morse System,” NIASnytt (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) Nordic Newsletter 2 (July 2001): 17–21.

  65 Septime Auguste Viguier [威基謁] (Weijiye), Dianbao xinshu [電報新書], in “Extension Selskabet—Kinesisk Telegrafordbog,” 1871; Arkiv nr. 10.619, in “Love og vedtægter med anordninger,” GN Store Nord A/S SN China and Japan Extension Telegraf. Rigsarkivet [Danish National Archives], Copenhagen, Denmark.

  66 No mention is made in Chinese, Danish, or British sources as to whether Chinese telegraphers made use of the “abbreviated numerals” in Continental Morse (also known as International Morse Code). If so, it is possible that telegraphers were able to bypass the inefficiency of standard Morse codes for numerals, while still facing the limitations inherent to using only numerals and never letters.

  67 Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers (New York: Berkeley Books, 1999).

  68 Steve Bellovin, “Compression, Correction, Confidentiality, and Comprehension: A Modern Look at Commercial Telegraph Codes,” paper presented at the Cryptologic History Symposium, 2009, Laurel, MD. See also chapter 5 of N. Katherine Hayles, How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

  69 Edward Benjamin Scott, Sixpenny Telegrams: Scott’s Concise Commercial Code of General Business Phrases (London: published by the author, 1885), 18, 35. Among many other possible examples, see in particular: Frank Shay, Cipher Book for the Use of Merchants, Stock Operators, Stock Brokers, Miners, Mining Men, Railroad Men, Real Estate Dealers, and Business Men Generally (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1922).

  70 Viguier’s original list of characters was later slightly adjusted by De Mingzai (德明在). See Erik Baark, Lightning Wires: The Telegraph and China’s Technological Modernization, 1860–1890 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 85. Following the 1949 revolution, we witness the further creation of two versions of the code, one in the mainland and one in Taiwan, which both made use of four-digit codes but with different code assignments. Even when accounting for these changes, we see that the basic model of Viguier’s system became the industry standard for Chinese for over a century.

  71 For a recent study of China’s telegraphic infrastructure see Roger R. Thompson, “The Wire: Progress, Paradox, and Disaster in the Strategic Networking of China, 1881–1901,” Frontiers in the History of China 10, no. 3 (2015): 395–427.

  72 Documents de la Conférence Télégraphique Internationale de Berlin (1909), 482.

  73 Over the course of the 1920s and 1930s, radio transmission bore a heavier responsibility for telegraphic transmission. Observing Shanghai alone, thirteen lines connected the metropole to destinations in Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia through intermediaries such as the Radio Corporation of America, Telefunken Telegraph and Wireless Company, Compagnie Générale de T.S.F., the Soviet Commission of Communications, the Directorate-General of Telegraphs and Posts of Annam, and other out
fits. When radio transmission began in 1931, it carried approximately 10 percent of international traffic from China. Just four years later in 1935, radio accounted for approximately 40 percent of all international traffic. Statistics according to Zhu Jiahua, minister of communications from 1932 to 1935. Zhu Jiahua [Chu Chia-hua], China’s Postal and Other Communications Services.

  74 Bull, “A Short History of the Shanghai Station,” 115. Even victories such as these carried unforeseen and sometimes negative repercussions, however. In this case, the general lack of familiarity with the Chinese language, and thus inability to authenticate a given transmission as “bona fide,” meant that China would be required to “deposit” official copies of the code book in multiple foreign countries, to serve as the proverbial gold standard. In an act not unlike the ritual interment of the “standard meter” and the “standard kilogram” in the French town of Breteuil in 1889—an act designed to preserve and render sacred an otherwise artificial system of weights and measures for eternity—the standard Chinese telegraph code would have to be “buried” in sites across the globe to ensure uniformity and temporal persistence. Such perpetuity, while it was to be desired in the case of weights and measures, could in the case of Chinese telegraphy only restrict future efforts to redesign the code. Dictionnaire télégraphique officiel chinois en français (Fawen yi Huayu dianma zihui) [法文譯華語電碼字彙] (Shanghai: Dianhouzhai [點后齋], n.d); Peter Galison, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2003), 91; Documents de la Conférence Télégraphique Internationale de Madrid (1932)—Tome I (Bern: Bureau International de l’Union Télégraphique, 1933), 429. Owing to the complex, variegated structure of the conventions and amendments that governed telegraphic tariffs, moreover, the goal of ameliorating the position of Chinese could not be achieved through any single victory. Each gain was hard-won, incremental, and in need of constant maintenance lest it be repealed by subsequent amendments. Every time a new subtechnology or practice was added to the expanding telegraphic repertoire—such as preferential pricing for holiday telegrams, novel methods of addressing telegrams, the emerging coordination of telegraphy and surface post in the form of “letter-telegrams,” and so forth—China could be sure that any new amendment would undoubtedly include at least one article pertaining to restrictions on encoded and numbered language. Christmas telegrams were to be assessed at a lower rate than regular telegrams, and yet such telegrams had to be written in “plaintext”—something Chinese did not technically possess. Likewise, it was stipulated in multiple agreements that telegram addresses had to be written in “plaintext” as well, and could not be written in either codes or ciphers. In the 1932 conference in Madrid, the congress outlined more detailed rules governing the practice of both “télégrammes de félicitations” and “letter-telegrams,” stipulating that such transmissions had to be written entirely in “clear language.” If regulations pertaining to discounted Christmas telegrams might appear utterly unrelated to the concerns of China, that is because they were—and it is precisely this unrelatedness that lies at the center of our ongoing consideration of “semiotic sovereignty.” China’s peculiar disadvantage within the international telegraphic community manifested itself, not in terms of targeted, conscious infringements on China’s interests by callous and self-interested European and American powers, but through processes far more aloof and unaware. In far-off convention halls in Lisbon, London, and the like, a distant and largely indifferent Euro-American community passed one regulation after the next, which, despite having nothing to do with China per se, in fact exerted measurable influence upon China’s interests, pricking, bumping, and bruising China practically each time. Each time that “clear language,” “plain language,” or analogous terms were invoked, representatives of China once again found themselves having to push for adjustments, lest China find itself once again excluded from one or another part of the ever-expanding and diversifying complex of global telegraphy.