Chinese Typewriter
I saw a Japanese made Hanz/Kanji typewriter in the Oxford Muesum of the History of Science today. It seems to be manufactured by a company called Shuangge but I can’t find any information about them.
There’s a youtube video which shows the typewriter in action, pretty impressive. Though by my count he’s getting around 36 Hanz/Kanji per minute, which even if each symbol is representing a whole word is pretty slow compared to a moderate typing speed of 70 WPM in English.
The device seems to work more liking a printing press than a traditional western typewriter, stamps are picked up from a matrix using a magnet, brushed past some ink and pressed onto the page. It looks likes there are enough stamps for all 2500 standard Kanji, though I couldn’t see any hiragana/katakana which indicates this model was designed purely for the Chinese market.
There’s another cool video of a different model here:
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