2011年8月23日 星期二

林語堂 明快打字機 1920-1947?

這是中國20世紀最重要的一人"熱情":


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。

[edit] Passions

Ming Kwai Typewriter

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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