Science: Faster Chinese

The Chinese have a practical reason for believing that one picture is worth a thousand words: it takes so long for them to write the words. And all their written words are conventionalized pictures anyway. Last week a new typewriter designed to speed up Chinese writing was exhibited in Manhattan. Chinese engineer Chung-Chin Kao had had the idea. International Business Machines Corp. had translated it into an electro-automatic Chinese typewriter. (Chinese typewriters are not new, but most models have been clumsy and inefficient.)

The machine, which would give a U.S. stenographer the heebie jeebies, has 5,400 characters (the most commonly used of...

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