Museum preserves Chinese-language computing breakthrough

[littlemissmartypants]

http://photos.mercurynews.com/2012/11/23/museum-preserves-chinese-language-computing-breakthrough/#name here

In 1972, Chan Yeh launched Ideographix in Silicon Valley to solve the problem of typing ancient Chinese characters on modern computers. The company burned brightly, but briefly, and today is preserved at Mountain View’s Computer History Museum as a reminder of all the anonymous innovators who contribute to technological progress.Chan Yeh, president of Ideographix, with some of the vintage computer hardware in his company's Sunnyvale, Calif. offices Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012. In the 1970s Yeh's company invented the software and hardware breakthrough that allowed the Chinese language to be quickly typeset in cold type -- the same way English language newspapers were being produced at the time. (Chinese with its thousands of intricate characters were beyond the ability of standard keyboards, printers and monitors until Chan Yeh came along.) (Patrick Tehan/Staff)

[littlemissmartypants]

1. I know it looks like a bunch of old junk hardware...

but to me it is the tools of an artist and an homage for times gone by...sigh.

[Warpy]

2. I've seen one of those old Chinese typewriters

that relied on overstrikes to create some of the more complicated characters. The platen was about 2 feet long, the keyboard the same.

I've also seen examples of their pre industrial technology and it is incredibly impressive, although the tools do look like a pile of random junk. The drawloom looked like a bunch of salvaged lumber, pieces sistered together for strength because they were split and cracked. Then I went around to the front of the thing and saw what they were weaving on it--oh my! A woodworker's saw looked like a piece of copper wire with dings hammered into it with a rock, the bow made of a strip of bamboo. What he was creating with it was amazing, a scale model of a roof system that would withstand strong earthquakes while allowing the walls to fall.

The worst mistake men at the top in this country ever made was in underestimating them.