Zhou Houkun

Zhou Houkun (, – after 1959 was a Chinese engineer and inventor best known for his Chinese typewriter design. Born in Wuxi, China, Zhou was selected for the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship and arrived in the United States in 1910. There, he attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying a range of engineering fields. At MIT, he assisted in the development of the wind tunnel and researched the use of bamboo to reinforce concrete.

While studying at MIT, Zhou developed a prototype for a Chinese typewriter, which could produce 4,000 common Chinese characters. His prototype received international attention and was featured in The New York Times and Popular Science. He returned to China in an effort to mass-produce the typewriter alongside the Commercial Press; due to poor production quality, Zhou never saw the mass production of his design. After his contract with Commercial Press ended, he worked as an engineer for various Chinese companies, as the chief editor of the Journal of The Chinese Engineering Society, and as the vice president of Shanghai Industrial Junior College, which he cofounded in 1940. He fled from China during its communist revolution and retired in the United States.

Early life and education Zhou Houkun was born in Wuxi, China, sometime between 1889 and 1891. His family had previously attained wealth through silkworm farming. Zhou's mother died when he was young; his father was the first in his family to become a Confucian scholar instead of a farmer or merchant. Zhou attended in Shanghai and Tangshan Railway and Mining College. ), a student at New York University. Qi's design differed by Zhou's in that it broke characters into separate elements, instead of maintaining them whole, thus potentially allowing more characters to be typed. Zhou criticized Qi's design in his 1915 Chinese Student's Monthly article, specifically attacking his approach of splitting the characters into pieces; Zhou believed that it was imperative to keep the characters in the whole form in which they were written. A photograph of him and his invention appeared in the April 1917 issue of Popular Science.

Return to China Following his graduation from MIT, Zhou was briefly employed by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. ), Zhou asked for permission to work with American factories; instead, Zhang released Zhou from his contract. Commercial Press employee Shu Zhendong took over the project and improved on Zhou's design; Shu's Chinese typewriter became the first to reach mass production.

Following his tenure at Commercial Press, Zhou worked as an engineer for various companies, including Han Yeh Ping Iron and Coal Company, Mobile Shanghai and Texaco Shanghai. He was also the chief editor of the Journal of The Chinese Engineering Society and the vice president of Shanghai Industrial Junior College, which he cofounded in 1940. In addition to his typewriter, he also designed an "impact-proof ship" in 1933. Fleeing the Chinese communist revolution, Zhou emigrated from China in 1949 and returned to the United States, where he eventually retired. There is no record of Zhou ever marrying. He was still alive by 1959, as he received an invitation to the Federation of Hong Kong Industries that year.