A Woman Who Typed on a Chinese Typewriter
When most people think of a Chinese typewriter, they envision an enormous machine with thousands of keys. But real Chinese typewriters looked nothing like that.
Inventor Chung-Chin Kao was looking for Chinese-speaking typists to demonstrate his machine in the US and China. He chose Lew, who was able to memorize the four-digit codes for 100 characters.
Lois Lew’s Story
Inventor Chung-Chin Kao needed Chinese-speaking typists to demonstrate his new typewriter, which had been made in conjunction with IBM. He offered a cash prize and the chance to become as famous in China as Ottmar Mergenthaler, Thomas Watson or Johannes Gutenberg. To do so, he had to convince incredulous journalists and buyers that his system was workable, particularly the coding system it relied on. He threw the dice, hiring Lew despite her minimal formal education and lack of traditional typist training.
When she accepted the job, she knew it was a risk. She spent a week holed up in a hotel memorizing the four-digit codes for the starter set of characters, her probationary status riding on her ability to prove that she could handle the task. She was soon off on a worldwide tour, typing in front of crowds as large as 3,000.
Typists were a powerful part of the state, preparing documents that could include political speeches, study guides and even statistics. As a result, they were subject to strict rules and oversight to ensure that they did not reveal classified information.
This was a delicate issue when it came to Chinese, where the government’s control over information was especially tight. In 1959, for example, Mao’s wife received an anonymously typed letter containing humiliating details about her romantic history. The incident caused her to faint. Investigators were able to trace the source of the letter to a disgruntled navy lieutenant, who had been given the authority to secretly type messages on behalf of the state.
Lois Lew was not one to be swayed. She continued to hone her skills, and by the time she was a mature woman, she was typing like a pro. Eventually, she redirected her life’s path from the laundromat to the launch of Cathay Pagoda, a restaurant in downtown Rochester. She reinvested her earnings from the business, along with those from her long stint at IBM, and it became a popular destination for students and local celebrities alike. Now, nearly 70 years later, Lew is still telling her story.
Lois Lew’s Typewriter
A remarkable story about a remarkable woman who typisted on a Chinese typewriter. During the 1940s, IBM sought to market its first-of-its-kind Chinese typewriter—a formidable machine that could handle the 5,400 or so characters of a language that lacks an alphabet. To operate the machine, you had to memorize a four-digit code that corresponded with each character on a revolving tray of metal strips etched in a grid pattern. This wasn’t an easy feat, but Lew took it in stride, confidently demoing the device in presentations from Manhattan to Shanghai.
Lew’s experience demonstrates why it was no small accomplishment to master the Chinese typewriter, which was used widely in the 1940s for drafts of political speeches, study guides and other important documents. Chinese students graduating from typing institutes, many of whom were lower- or middle-class women, often went on to work in banks, government offices and universities. Typewriters like the Chinese model made it possible to prepare crisp and legible copies of political speeches, study guides and statistics on a large scale—and the machines were even used in the production of propaganda posters.
One of those posters, created for the East China Sea Fleet, caught the attention of authorities who suspected it was a leak of sensitive military information. The signature pale green ’Double Pigeon’ brand of Chinese typewriter was the kind used by typists at the time, and its appearance in the poster led experts to conclude that a disgruntled navy lieutenant had leaked the information on the machine.
In the aftermath of the incident, Lew was sacked from her job at the Cathay Pagoda Restaurant in Rochester, New York. But the experience left a lasting impression on her. “I realized it was not about the responsibilities and duties of my position; it was all about being a good worker, being responsible,” she says. “I’ve always tried to do a good job.”
Lew died last month at the age of 98. Today, her legacy lives on in the hundreds of millions of people who use computers and smartphones to type in Chinese. Whether they realize it or not, the challenge of fitting tens of thousands of characters into an easily usable machine is still a crucial one—and the Chinese typewriter holds clues to solutions.
Lois Lew’s Mastery
For over a century, these esoteric contraptions have been objects of curiosity and confusion, and even a fair share of ridicule. They look like a cross between a deli-meat slicer and a small printing press. They have no keys, just thousands of little metal characters arranged in a grid system. In order to operate one, typists must essentially memorize the general locations of all 2,500 Chinese characters on their machine.
A woman named Lois Lew was the first person to master IBM’s Chinese typewriter, and she would go on to use it with aplomb in presentations from Manhattan to Shanghai. Today, Stanford University associate professor Thomas Mullaney is trying to give these improbable machines the recognition they deserve.
Mullaney has assembled an impressive collection of the old Chinese typewriters, which he is now touring. His goal is to get them into a permanent museum display, but he’s also hoping to raise funds on Kickstarter so that the machines can be shipped to institutions around the world for research and preservation.
The story of the Chinese typewriter is a remarkable one, and it’s full of tinkerers, prototypes, failures, and successes in a century-long quest to solve an engineering puzzle. The solutions these typists came up with may have unexpected relevance for the ways that we communicate on smartphones today.
For example, the codings that Chinese typists developed allowed them to quickly find the right characters on their machines and create a form of predictive text. These methods are now used by many computer programs and smartphones.
The era of the Chinese typewriter may be long gone, but Lew’s story still offers us a glimpse of what it was like to live in a time when the global world of business and culture was first coming into focus. She was a woman who travelled extensively, embraced new technologies, and took on extraordinary challenges. That is a story worth telling. For more on Lois Lew, see the obituary in this issue of The New York Times Magazine. To subscribe to the magazine, click here. This story originally appeared in the May 31, 2018 edition of The New York Times Magazine.
Lois Lew’s Legacy
Lois Lew confidently operated a highly complex, first-of-its-kind Chinese typewriter in presentations from Manhattan to Shanghai. Now 96, she’s still telling her story.
The improbable life of a typewriting virtuoso
When IBM debuted its Chinese typewriter in the late 1940s, inventor Chung-Chin Kao needed typists to demonstrate the machine in the United States and China. He turned to a Rochester native, Lew, who hadn’t gone beyond the eighth grade because she was told that married women didn’t go to high school.
The Chinese typewriter resembled “something like a cross between a deli-meat slicer and a small printing press,” wrote Julie Makinen in the Los Angeles Times. Its surface was etched with thousands of characters, and it required the operator to memorize four-digit codes that corresponded with each. Those codes were pressed against a revolving drum inside the machine, which, when spinning at 60 revolutions per minute, produced the letters on the paper. Each letter had its own unique sound, and the machine produced a total of 5,400 different combinations.
During the early Cold War, such machines held an extraordinary cache of secrets. Kao and Lew churned out dozens of reports about the Soviet Union’s nuclear capabilities, along with secret messages between Chinese leaders and dissidents. The information helped the Communist Party gain a firmer grip on power and allowed its leaders to better understand their people’s aspirations and frustrations.
But the government also used the machine to control information. For example, in 1959, Mao’s wife received an anonymous, typed missive scolding her over humiliating details of her romantic history. The message was so upsetting, in fact, that it caused her to faint. Investigators quickly found the writer—a navy lieutenant who had access to the typewriter—and sent him to prison for several years.
In 1969, Lew and her husband invested their laundromat earnings and some of her IBM earnings into Cathay Pagoda, a Chinese restaurant in downtown Rochester that grew to be a mainstay of the community, attracting not only locals but also celebrities (Katharine Hepburn once dined there). The venture was so successful that it eventually expanded to include three restaurants, a bakery, and an insurance agency.
