The Commercial Press Model, the only Chinese 

 typewriter actually produced for commercial 



use. 



luick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog 



CHINESE TYPEWRITERS; 



A case of stimulus diffusion 



now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of thej 



B/ Kenneth Starr, 



Curator, Asiatic Archaeology and 



Ettinology 



Anthropologists make common use of two terms in refer- 

 ring to the process whereby cuhural elements, either mate- 

 rial or non-material, diffuse or spread from one culture to 

 another. These terms are diffusion and stimulus diffusion, 

 which A. L. Kroeber, pioneer American anthropologist, dif- 

 ferentiated as follows: 



In ordinary diffusion . . . both the principle and its 

 mechanism are taken over by a receiving culture from 

 the inventing one. Occasionally, however, there are 

 difficulties about acceptance of the mechanism. . . . 

 The idea or principle may then also fail to be accepted. 

 But again, the idea may exercise an appeal that causes 

 it to penetrate. An effort may then be made in the re- 

 ceiving culture to devise another mechanism that will 

 produce the desired result. Thus an invention, or rein- 

 vention, is stimulated by contact transmission or [stim- 

 ulus] diffusion.' 

 The process of stimulus diffusion is quite strikingly illus- 

 trated by the manner in which the basic idea of the Western 

 typewriter spread to China and Japan, whose systems of 



visual linguistic symbolism, distinguished by the use of 

 "characters" (as 4^ , for blue), instead of an alphabet (a 

 symbol for each sound) or syllabary (a symbol for each syl- 

 lable), necessitated an almost complete reinvention. 



Three variant forms of the Chinese typewriter have been 

 produced: the several models produced in the late 1920's 

 and the 30's by the Chinese publishing company, the Com- 

 mercial Press, Ltd.; the experimental model introduced in 

 1946 by the International Business Machines Corporation; 

 and the exjserimental model invented in 1947 by Lin Yutang. 



The Commercial Press Model 



Based on a Japanese prototype, the earliest Commercial 

 Press model was produced commercially in Shanghai in the 

 mid-20's. During the next decade the company produced 

 several other models, all based on the same mechanical 

 principle, but differing slightly in operational details as the 

 invention was refined. The model described here was mar- 

 keted in the mid-30's and seems to have been the last the 

 company produced. ^ 



Structural Features 



The Commercial Press typewriter consists of four main 

 parts: the base, the frame, the grid and finder-chart, and 

 the superstructure. 



Base. The heavy base is formed of two sturdy planks, 

 spaced slighdy apart and set horizontally between two cast- 

 iron side pieces. This base is 17J^ inches wide, 163^ inches 

 deep and 2]4 inches high. 



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