Tag Archives: qwerty

How QWERTY keyboards show the English dominance of tech

How QWERTY keyboards show the English dominance of tech

Last week, MIT Technology Review published an excerpt from a new book, The Chinese Computer, which talks about how this problem was solved in China. After generations of work to sort Chinese characters, modify computer parts, and create keyboard apps that automatically predict the next character, it is finally possible for any Chinese speaker to […]

The quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete

The quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete

If Huang Zhenyu’s mastery of a complex alphanumeric code weren’t impressive enough, consider the staggering speed of his performance. He transcribed the first 31 Chinese characters of Hu Jintao’s speech in roughly 5 seconds, for an extrapolated speed of 372 Chinese characters per minute. By the close of the grueling 20-minute contest, one extending over […]