MingKwai Typewriter

In 1947, in New York, the writer Lin Yutang built a Chinese typewriter and named it MingKwai: "clear and quick". Only one was ever made. Now it is on your screen: lift the hood, press three keys, and type a Chinese character. Not a picture, but a working machine in 3D: every key goes down, the type cylinder turns, the preview drum and the chains follow, the hammer strikes and the paper moves up a character at a time. THE MINGKWAI CHINESE TYPEWRITER • Three keys, one character: a top key for the character's upper-left shape, a bottom key for its lower-right shape, and the magic eye shows eight candidates. Press 1 to 8 to pick one. For example: 清 = 氵 + 月 + 1. • Lift the hood and watch the type cylinder turn to the bar, the preview drum follow on its chain and the carriage slide to the row; the motor and the clutch are in there too. • Turn, tilt and zoom with two fingers to see the machine from any side. • The magic eye's loupe: the candidates enlarged. Tap one to type it. • Look up: enter Chinese text and the typewriter presses every key itself, and shows you how each character is typed. • 72 keys and 36 octagonal type bars, rebuilt from the 1947 prototype and Lin Yutang's US patent. • Vertical columns, right to left, 18 characters each, on to the next column by itself. • More than 4,700 characters, all of the 3,500 most common. The original key assignment is lost; this one is worked out from the structure of the characters. THE ENGLISH TYPEWRITER • A classic portable: type bars fly up from the basket and strike through the ribbon; hold SHIFT and the whole basket drops. • Black and red ribbon, the margin bell, the carriage return and pushing the carriage by hand, as on the real thing. PAPER • Four papers: cream xuan paper, natural kraft, light kraft and warm white parchment. • Pull a finished page out to look at it, save it to Photos or share it. • Every page is kept in a stack. Pick one up and type on. THE MANUAL AND THE STORY • A manual laid out like the original 1947 leaflet, with Lin Yutang's patent drawings. • A timeline from Lin Yutang's birth to the prototype found in a basement and now at Stanford. ON A FOLDING IPHONE On iPhone Duo it is a typewriter. Closed, the outer display is its case: an old wooden box for the MingKwai, a leather one for the English machine; switch them in the corner. Open it like a laptop: the keyboard on the lower half, the paper on the upper half. It works on every other iPhone and iPad too: tap a case on the table to open it. GOOD TO KNOW The app's interface is in Chinese. No account, no network, no data collected, no in-app purchases.