PHILADELPHIA INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Descriptions of the Commercial Press Exhibit. A rare surviving example of the brochure issued by China's largest publisher and maker of scientific instruments to accompany its stand at the 1926 Philadelphia Sesqui-Centennial Exposition. Alongside print publications and cutting-edge laboratory equipment, the Commercial Press displayed Shu Zhendong's newly invented Chinese typewriter, a major advance in the development of modern information technology.The typewriter, advertised and pictured on page 56, promises to solve "a serious problem in office administration in China... It is the miraculous achievement of the inventor that, although there are 3,000 characters in the font, yet a typist, after the practice of one or two weeks, will be able to locate any character instantly."Online records show copies in the City of Philadelphia archives and six other institutions, all in the US (Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, Peabody Essex, Temple, Californian State University Los Angeles, and University of Delaware).

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