Thai typewriter

Typewriters with the capability to print the Thai script were first developed in 1891 by Edwin Hunter McFarland, based on double-keyboard Smith Premier models. They became widely popular, especially for government use, though their production was discontinued in 1915 and newer shift-based layouts were subsequently developed by Edwin's brother George B. McFarland. The traditional keyboard layout, now known as Kedmanee, was introduced in 1931 and became the de facto standard, remaining popular even when the newer Pattachote layout, introduced in 1965, was officially endorsed by the government but failed to gain traction. The use of typewriters rapidly declined toward the end of the 20th century, when they were displaced by personal computers, though their layouts served as precursors to those of modern computer keyboards.

The typewriter modified Thai typography and orthography in several ways, most significantly expediting the obsolescence of the consonants kho khuat and kho khon [th], which were left out of the earliest typewriters due to space limitations.

Following the introduction and popularization of typewriters in the West in the 1880s, the first Thai typewriter was developed by Edwin Hunter McFarland, a Thai-born son of American missionary Samuel G. McFarland. In 1891, Edwin took leave from his work as a secretary to Prince Damrong Rajanubhab (then Minister of Public Instruction) to work with type-cutters in Syracuse, New York, to modify the recently introduced Smith Premier typewriter for Thai characters.

McFarland chose the Smith Premier for his base model as it featured a seven-row "double" keyboard (one that separately included both uppercase and lowercase keys, without a shift mechanism) which was large enough to accommodate most of the Thai alphabet's 44 consonants and over 20 vowel symbols and tone marks, in addition to digits and punctuation marks. However, not all characters could be fitted into the model's 76 keys, and McFarland decided to exclude two less used consonants, ฃ kho khuat and ฅ kho khon, which contributed to their eventual obsolescence.

McFarland brought his typewriter to Siam in 1892 and presented it to King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), who was impressed and ordered 17 machines for government use. The typewriters soon became indispensable in government affairs and found heavy use, just as centralizing reforms were being implemented to modernize the country's administration through the expanding bureaucracy.

Edwin McFarland died in 1895, leaving the typewriter business to his younger brother George B. McFarland, a medical doctor who was by then head of the Royal Medical College at Siriraj Hospital. In 1897, George established a Smith Premier dealership on Charoen Krung Road (on the corner of Unakan Intersection in the area now known as Wang Burapha), and the business flourished, importing and selling thousands of units over the next few years alone. By the 1910s, it was being used in government offices all over the country, as well as many private businesses.

During this time, the Smith Premier brand had been acquired by the Remington Typewriter Company, who in 1915 discontinued the production of double-keyboard models, which were unsuited for touch typing. This adversely affected Thai users. Remington supplied McFarland with a replacement model that utilized a shift layout, but it was spurned by users, and McFarland resorted to supplying the market with second-hand older models refitted with Thai types and keys. It was not until McFarland, during a 1922 visit to the US, worked with Remington to create a newer portable Thai model (known by the Remington brand), that the shift system began to gain acceptance among Thai users. Further work with Remington in 1925 resulted in a desktop version that McFarland successfully marketed along with promotion of the touch-typing system. He established a typing school, offering three months of free training for each typewriter bought, and the shift system gained traction among users, eventually replacing the older Smith Premiers.

The early Thai shift typewriters had several design flaws. For example, characters with ascenders such as ฝ were missing, and had to be inputted as ผ. The dead keys for above- and below-line vowels and tone marks also had to be typed before their corresponding consonants, in reversal of the usual writing order. McFarland worked to eventually address these issues. Some sources state that he worked with two employees, Sawat Makprayun and Suwanprasert Ketmanee, analyzing 38 books over a period of seven years to redesign the layout, which was released in 1931, while others credit Wiriya Na Sinlawan and pastor Pluang Sudhikam as the developers he worked with. In her biography of McFarland, his wife Bertha Blount writes that the new layout was scientifically developed so that "over fifty per cent of the keys most frequently struck lie in the second bank [home row], and less than ten per cent required use of the shift." McFarland brought the redesigned layout to Remington, who released new models accordingly, and the design became widely adopted, being taken up by competing manufacturers as well.