A Chinese Typewriter, 1899

(2014)

I've always been so thankful that English uses an alphabet. a) The complexity of a Chinese (or say a Japanese typewriter [1]) must have been an engineering/production/maintenance nightmare b) The manufacturer has to pick which words you have access to, there will literally be sentences and words that cannot be written. (or, you end up with things like "extra double good")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_typewriter