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The Chinese typewriter is a curious beast - heavy, cumbersome and without a keyboard because Chinese is not written with an alphabet. Tom Mullaney of Stanford University in the United States is on a mission to take his collection of twelve Chinese typewriters (nine more than the biggest collection in China itself) on tour, at home and abroad, with the help of crowdfunding. He says this invention even preempted modern, digital methods of communication, including predictive text. Dan Damon asked him to describe a typical Chinese typewriter. (Picture: A Chinese typewriter Credit: Tom Mullaney/Stanford University)