The Exhibition

Imagine yourself at the dawn of telegraphy in the 1840s, trying to invent Morse Code for Chinese–or in the 1890s trying to invent a Chinese typewriter. How would you fit thousands of characters onto a machine with fewer than 50 keys? Or perhaps you are in the 1950s, trying to invent the first Chinese computer. How would you fit Chinese onto a QWERTY keyboard? Throughout the age of modern information technology (I.T.), the Chinese language has presented fascinating and irresistible puzzles for engineers, linguists, and entrepreneurs across the globe.

It may seem impossible, and yet it happened. With help from the global community, China solved these puzzles and went from being the “dark horse” of the I.T. world, to a global I.T. powerhouse. How it achieved this feat has long been a mystery to historians and technologists alike.

In this exhibit, we explore the design, technology, and art of Chinese characters in the information age. Through a collection of rare typewriters and computers — and a diverse array of historic photographs, telegraph code books, typing manuals, ephemera, propaganda posters, and more — we gain unprecedented insight into the still-transforming history of the world’s oldest living language.