Thomas S Mullaney

Oct 21, 2024 | foreignaffairs.com | Thomas S Mullaney |Andrew J. Nathan

In This Review In This Review The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information AgeMost people who compose texts in Chinese characters no longer use brushes or pens; they use QWERTY keyboards. They do so through a more complicated version of the autocomplete software now familiar to people who write in English on computers or cellphones.

Jul 17, 2024 | asiasociety.org | Thomas S Mullaney

Summer is here! And with it, our bi-annual reading list with books from and about Asia. As always, we asked for your favorite books and received excellent recommendations from colleagues, speakers, and friends. The following ten books are sure to keep you busy throughout the summer, whether you prefer fiction or non-fiction.

Jul 12, 2024 | devicedaily.com | Thomas S Mullaney

How China’s 1980s PC industry hacked dot-matrix printers  May 27, 2024 As the country entered the era of personal computing, most printers could only output western characters. Reprogramming them required uncommon ingenuity. BY Thomas S.

Jun 26, 2024 | chinafile.com | Thomas S Mullaney

A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? To answer this question, one needs to return to the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II, and follow up through to its many iterations in the present day.

May 28, 2024 | spectrum.ieee.org | Thomas S Mullaney

Today, typing in Chinese works by converting QWERTY keystrokes into Chinese characters via a software interface, known as an input method editor. But this was not always the case. Thomas S. Mullaney’s new book, The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age, published by the MIT Press, unearths the forgotten history of Chinese input in the 20th century.