MingKwai, Rediscovered - A Symposium on the Revolutionary Chinese Typewriter

On December 2, 2025, I had the privilege of attending “MingKwai, Rediscovered” at Stanford University—a symposium exploring the origins, history, and lasting impact of one of the most revolutionary (and perhaps underappreciated) inventions in the history of Chinese information technology: the MingKwai Chinese Typewriter.

A Remarkable Discovery

The story begins with a discovery in a New York basement. The MingKwai Chinese Typewriter prototype, invented by Chinese-born author, translator, and cultural commentator Lin Yutang in the 1940s, was rediscovered in 2025 and entrusted to the Stanford University Libraries. This extraordinary machine, which represents a milestone in Chinese information technology, will now be used in research, exhibits, and academic programs at Stanford.

The symposium was organized to celebrate the typewriter’s rediscovery and new home at Stanford, bringing together scholars and experts from across multiple disciplines to reintroduce the legendary MingKwai to the world. Dr. Thomas S. Mullaney, Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University, led a team of researchers and students in exploring the MingKwai’s historical, technological, and cultural significance.

Meeting the Felix Family

One of the highlights of the symposium was getting to speak with the Felix family, who made this remarkable discovery in their New York basement. Their story is a fascinating reminder of how history can be hiding in plain sight, waiting to be rediscovered.

They shared what it was like to find this strange machine—something they didn’t immediately recognize as historically significant—and the whirlwind that followed. After posting about their discovery on Facebook, they were completely unprepared for the response. Their post went viral in the typewriter and Chinese history communities, and suddenly they found themselves bombarded with messages.

Museums from around the world reached out. Chinese institutions expressed strong interest. Even governments contacted them, offering large sums of money for the typewriter. It must have been overwhelming—going from finding an unusual object in your basement to fielding serious inquiries from international institutions and governmental bodies, all offering significant financial incentives.

Thankfully, Dr. Thomas Mullaney graciously stepped in to guide them through this process. He helped them understand the historical significance of what they had found and navigate the complex world of artifact acquisition, ensuring that the MingKwai would find the right home—one where it would be properly cared for, studied, and made accessible for research and education.

Hearing their story firsthand added such a personal dimension to the symposium. This wasn’t just about a machine or an inventor—it was about a family who stumbled upon history and, with guidance from experts, made the decision to entrust it to an institution that would preserve and honor its legacy. Their journey from basement discovery to Stanford’s collection is a reminder that preserving history often depends on ordinary people making thoughtful decisions about remarkable objects.

When I inquired about the backstory of how the typewriter could have ended up in their family’s possession, they shared a fascinating connection: Mrs. Felix’s grandfather was affiliated with Linotype Company. This raises intriguing questions about the machine’s journey.

The Felix family connection to Linotype could mean several things. They might have been affiliated with the company after Lin was forced to sell the rights to the MingKwai prototype to Linotype in 1948, or they could have had a hand in the prototype’s creation or manufacture earlier. This opens up a compelling historical mystery.

Lin Yutang was, after all, not a mechanical engineer by any means. He was a writer, translator, and cultural commentator—someone who could conceive of revolutionary ideas for organizing and inputting Chinese characters, but who would have needed to outsource the actual mechanical engineering and manufacturing work. Yet nowhere in the documentation is there a name for who assisted with the prototype’s mechanical design and construction.

The possibility that someone at Linotype was assisting with the prototype or its manufacture—perhaps even before Lin had to sell the rights to the company—would explain both the quality of the mechanical work and how the machine ended up in a family with Linotype connections. It’s a tantalizing historical puzzle: who were the unnamed engineers who turned Lin’s brilliant conceptual framework into a working mechanical device?

This connection also adds another layer to understanding the circumstances surrounding Lin’s sale of the MingKwai rights to Linotype. If Linotype engineers were already involved in the prototype’s development, the sale might have been more than just a financial transaction—it could have been formalizing an existing relationship or bringing an in-progress project fully into the company’s portfolio at a time when Lin needed the funds.

The Man Behind the Machine

Lin Yutang was far more than just an inventor. In his early career, he was a writer, and his prototype of the MingKwai typewriter was completed in 1946. But his journey to creating this machine began with a fundamental problem: improving the phonebook/dictionary optimization for Chinese characters—the equivalent of creating an alphabetical order system for Chinese.

Lin was the first to create such a system, breaking Chinese characters into prefixes and suffixes in a revolutionary way. Before this innovation, there was no efficient method for organizing or retrieving Chinese characters. His system would become foundational to how Chinese text input works even today.

Lin was also the author of My Country and My People, a bestseller that remained on bestseller lists for 52 weeks and established him as one of the most influential interpreters of Chinese culture for the West in the first half of the 20th century. His book sales, in fact, likely funded the creation of the MingKwai machine—estimated at $120,000 at the time (worth approximately $2 million today).

How the MingKwai Works

The MingKwai typewriter operates on a remarkably innovative system. It features:

• An upper bank of 36 keys - These select a type cylinder
• A lower bank of 29 keys - These select an axial position on the type cylinder
• 8 selection keys - These rotate the type cylinder to a specified facet and print the selected character

The upper and lower bank keys change what appears in the “Magic Eye”—a display showing up to 9 characters, with 8 available to print. If a 9th character is available, it goes to a “next page” option.

The system broke characters into prefixes and suffixes, and what makes this truly remarkable is that this is the first pop-up menu and the first input editor ever created—and the writing method is still fundamentally the same for Chinese input today. Modern users can reach speeds of 221 characters per minute in Chinese using systems derived from Lin’s innovations.

Perhaps even more significant is that the MingKwai is a visually designed typewriter—characters are typed based on how they are seen, not by their meaning or phonetic pronunciation. This revolutionary approach means that someone who didn’t know Chinese could theoretically write on this machine by visually picking out character components and piecing together words using three strokes (prefix, suffix, and selection). This visual approach democratized Chinese typewriting, making it accessible to users regardless of their linguistic knowledge, and represents a fundamentally different paradigm from phonetic or meaning-based input methods.

The Physical Machine

The MingKwai has 8 faces of 29 columns on 36 rods. The red keytops represent basic strokes, while the top 2 rows contain common radicals. Keytop symbols with a circle signify “other shapes,” while hollow shapes signify potential strokes.

The type used in the MingKwai was designed by Commercial Press, called Fanggu Huozi #2 (22pt) in traditional Chinese. The Latin alphabet was based on Memphis (Linotype).

Interestingly, the typewriter was designed primarily for vertical writing, but it supported multiple scripts and writing systems: Chinese, Latin, Japanese, Cyrillic, Bopomofo, Arabic numerals, Suzhou numerals, punctuation, symbols, and dingbats—with some vertical/horizontal options for Latin and other scripts.

The patent number for this invention is 2613795, and I was excited to learn that a digital recreation of the keyboard is currently in development.

The Linotype Report: A Critical Examination

One of the most fascinating aspects of the symposium was the discussion of Lin’s unfortunate situation in 1948, when he had to sell the rights to the MingKwai prototype to Linotype. The Felix family’s connection to Linotype adds an intriguing dimension to this story—could their relative’s involvement have been part of the pathway that led to Linotype’s acquisition?

The circumstances that forced Lin to sell his creation are a sobering reminder that financial pressures can shape the fate of even the most revolutionary inventions. Having invested an estimated $120,000 (worth approximately $2 million today) in the prototype, largely funded by his book sales, Lin found himself in a position where he needed to sell the rights. The question remains: why did Linotype buy it? Was it to suppress competition, or because they recognized its value and potential? Or perhaps, given the potential pre-existing relationship suggested by the Felix family connection, the acquisition was formalizing an existing collaboration or bringing a project fully into Linotype’s portfolio.

Linotype produced a report that both criticized and praised various features of the machine. They expressed doubt about Lin’s claim of 50 words per minute. In testing, new users reached up to 20 words per minute after only 6-9 hours of practice—already faster than the MingKwai’s mechanism would permit at that stage.

The report noted that even though the two test subjects had no previous Chinese typing experience and very limited training, they had already reached the point of being capable of typing faster than the machine’s mechanism would allow. The question was raised: if mechanical bugs were ironed out, would it permit the speeds claimed by Lin? The consensus in the report was doubtful that it could achieve over 40 words per minute.

The report also made competitive comparisons, noting the contrast with claims made by Japanese manufacturers of 80 words per minute for their machines and 50 words per minute for Shanghai Commercial Press typewriters. The committee expressed the opinion that while these claims might be questionable, unless MLCo (likely referring to Linotype Company) could demonstrate a minimum operating speed of 50 words per minute for its Chinese typewriter, it would face a serious competitive disadvantage.

The report’s most critical assessment was of the machine’s mechanical complexity: “Much of constant mechanical trouble and the attendant difficulty in making repairs due to overly complex mechanism. Before it can be considered acceptable for market, complete redesign leading to mechanical simplification must be achieved, probably meaning the developing of a completely new mechanical design partly or entirely discarding Lin’s machine.”

The Sheffield Dish

Another fascinating discovery mentioned at the symposium was the Sheffield dish (also called the Sheffield disc), which has also been discovered and will be joining the Stanford library collection. This is the disc for the Sheffield Chinese Typewriter, invented ca. 1897 by Devello Zelotes Sheffield of Buffalo, New York—the very first Chinese typewriter. The Sheffield Chinese Typewriter was a 4,000-character machine, making it a crucial piece of the historical puzzle that helps us understand the evolution of Chinese typewriting technology and the context in which the MingKwai was developed.

Unfortunately, I was unable to capture a picture of the Sheffield dish during the symposium’s PowerPoint presentation due to limited screen time—perhaps it’s still meant to be somewhat of a secret until more research is completed. The Sheffield Chinese Typewriter remains a sought-after artifact in the typewriter collecting community, and having both artifacts together at Stanford will allow researchers to trace the complete lineage of Chinese typewriter development, from this earliest iteration (the Sheffield) to Lin Yutang’s revolutionary prototype (the MingKwai).

A Talk by Willie Liu

The symposium featured a talk by Willie Liu, a type designer, typographer, and educator from Shanghai’s Atelier Anchor. His presentation provided detailed technical insights into the type design and typographical aspects of the MingKwai, helping to contextualize the machine within the broader history of Chinese typography.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Willie Liu’s work was his reconstruction of all possible characters that could be printed by the MingKwai. Through careful analysis and reconstruction, he discovered that the machine could actually print only about 31,000 characters—significantly fewer than Lin Yutang’s claimed 90,000 characters. This discrepancy is notable not just for the quantitative difference, but for what it reveals about the gap between ambition and mechanical reality. Even with this more modest (though still substantial) character count, the MingKwai represented an enormous leap forward in Chinese typewriter technology, but Liu’s findings provide a more accurate picture of the machine’s actual capabilities versus its inventor’s optimistic projections.

Lin Yutang’s Later Life

The symposium also touched on Lin Yutang’s later years. He settled in Taiwan from 1966 to 1976, describing these as his last “happiest years.” The government gifted a home in Taiwan to his family. With roots that made returning to mainland China impossible, he returned to Chinese writing and converted to Christianity. He authored books, translated Dream of the Red Chamber, and worked on an English-Chinese dictionary.

Lin Yutang passed away in 1976. After his death, the government took back the home, but it was eventually turned into a library. It is now the Lin Yutang Museum, maintained by the Lin Yutang House, preserving his legacy for future generations.

Later in life, Lin’s family also used his name for authorship, particularly for cookbooks. Hsiang Ju Lin wrote Chinese Gastronomy, sometimes called “the savarin” for its importance in Chinese culinary literature—a significant work on Chinese gastronomy that continues to be influential.

Reflections on Legacy

What struck me most about this symposium was the realization of how fundamental Lin Yutang’s innovations were to modern computing. The pop-up menu, the input editor, the prefix/suffix system for character selection—these are all concepts we take for granted today, but they were revolutionary when first implemented in the MingKwai.

The fact that modern Chinese input methods still use the same fundamental approach, and that users can achieve speeds of 221 characters per minute, speaks to the enduring genius of Lin’s design. Even if the mechanical implementation had issues, the conceptual framework was brilliant and ahead of its time.

The question of whether Linotype purchased the rights to suppress the technology or because they recognized its value remains open. What is clear is that Lin had to sell his creation in 1948, likely due to financial pressures after investing so heavily in the prototype. The mechanical complexity was indeed a barrier, but the core innovation was sound. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most important inventions don’t succeed in their original form but live on through the concepts they introduce, and that the path of innovation is often shaped by circumstances beyond the inventor’s control.

Looking Forward

The symposium concluded with excitement about the future research and academic programs that will grow around this remarkable machine. Having the MingKwai at Stanford, accessible for research and exhibition, means that scholars and students will be able to study it in depth, understanding not just the machine itself but its place in the broader history of information technology, Chinese culture, and global innovation.

There are several exciting developments on the horizon that will deepen our understanding of the MingKwai and Lin Yutang’s work:

Ongoing Research and Reconstruction: Research on the MingKwai will continue to unfold, with reconstruction efforts helping to understand every aspect of how the machine was designed and built. These detailed studies will reveal more about the engineering decisions, the mechanical innovations, and the challenges that were faced in creating this revolutionary device.

Documentation from Lin Yutang House: The Lin Yutang House will be releasing documents related to the MingKwai and Lin Yutang’s work. These archival materials promise to provide invaluable primary source documentation that will shed light on the development process, Lin’s thinking, and the context in which the typewriter was created. This release will be a significant contribution to scholarly research and public understanding of this important chapter in Chinese typewriting history.

Collaborative Work with Atelier Anchor: Atelier Anchor, where Willie Liu works, will continue their involvement in researching and documenting the MingKwai. Their expertise in type design and typography, combined with the detailed technical work they’ve already done (such as the character count reconstruction), will be essential in fully understanding the typographical and design aspects of the machine.

Reproductions by HTX and Atelier Anchor: Perhaps most exciting, HTX and Atelier Anchor in Shanghai will be creating reproductions of the MingKwai. These recreations will allow researchers, scholars, and the public to interact with and study the machine in ways that might not be possible with the original fragile prototype. These reproductions will serve as both research tools and educational resources, bringing the MingKwai to a wider audience and ensuring that this important piece of technological history can be experienced and understood by future generations.

As someone fascinated by typewriters and their history, attending this symposium was a unique opportunity to learn about a machine that, while perhaps not commercially successful in its time, represents a crucial link in the chain of innovation that led to modern text input systems. The MingKwai isn’t just a historical curiosity—it’s a testament to how solving the problem of Chinese text input required fundamental innovations in interface design that would later become standard across all computing.

The fact that this prototype was discovered in a New York basement and is now at Stanford, being studied and celebrated, feels like a fitting next chapter in the story of a machine that was ahead of its time. With ongoing research, document releases, and reproduction efforts on the horizon, we’re witnessing the beginning of a new phase in understanding and appreciating Lin Yutang’s groundbreaking work. His legacy continues to influence how we interact with technology today, even if most people don’t realize it.

I’m grateful to have been able to attend this symposium and learn about this remarkable piece of history. The MingKwai deserves to be remembered not just as a typewriter, but as one of the foundational inventions of modern human-computer interaction. I look forward to seeing how the research, documentation, and reproductions continue to illuminate this important chapter in the history of technology.