以發明家言，林語堂早年即已立志發明中文打字機。當時，科學嚴謹的漢字檢索系統仍未建立起來；又由於漢字本身是符號文字而非字母文字，長期以來人們對製成 中文打字機的可能性多持懷疑態度。為解決這一難題，林語堂在數十年間鍥而不捨地研究探索，自斥資金，購置設備，堅持不懈地一再嘗試，以致一度傾盡家財、負 債累累，而最終成功發明 了「明快中文打字機」，幷於1946年在美國申請專利。六年半以後，到了1952年，他才取得該項發明的專利權。此打字機以「明快」命名，乃取其明易快捷 之意，寄託了他希望人人都能順利操作使用的心願。除開「明快中文打字機」，他另有若干項小發明亦獲得了專利——例如，其中一件是可以擠出牙膏的牙刷。
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Dr. Lin was very active in the popularization of classical Chinese literature in the West, as well as the general Chinese attitude towards life. He worked to formulate Gwoyeu Romatzyh a new method of romanizing the Chinese language, and created an indexing system for Chinese characters.
He was interested in mechanics. Since Chinese is a character-based rather than an alphabet-based language, with many thousands of separate characters, it has always been difficult to employ modern printing technologies. For many years it was doubted that a Chinese typewriter could be invented. Lin, however, worked on this problem for decades and eventually came up with a workable typewriter—brought to market in the middle of the war with Japan.
He also invented and patented several lesser inventions such as a toothbrush with toothpaste dispensing.
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