Stanford Humanities Center
As the New York Times reports, the Stanford historian went down an 18-year rabbit hole in search of obsolete machines. But there was one he thought he’d never find.
Jul 22, 2025
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In 2010, Tom Mullaney found himself way out in the suburbs of London. A woman there wanted to show him a Chinese typewriter. She was going to be renovating her house soon, she told him, and it needed a new home.
Dr. Mullaney, a professor of Chinese history at Stanford University, had spent years searching the globe for Chinese typewriters, wondrous machines capable of printing thousands of Chinese characters while remaining small enough to keep on a desk.
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