Page 36 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

Ideas & Inventions / Global milestones

W INUIT CLIMATE
SCIENCE

Insights passed on through
the generations provide
ancient perspectives on
modern climate change

Few understand the impact of climate
change better than the Inuit people of
the Arctic. For generations, the Inuit have
closely studied their environment. Many
tribes migrate to new hunting grounds
with the change of the seasons,
following long-established routes
through the snow. The ice is part of their
life. As a consequence, Inuit oral
histories provide some of the most
detailed documentary evidence we have
of climate change, often stretching back
hundreds of years. Many Inuit recall how
their parents and grandparents used to
cross rivers that are now dried up.
Today, the Inuit continue to play an
important role in the development of
climate science. The Nunavut Climate
Change Centre in Canada hosts
research projects to which local people
contribute. Inuit elders were recently
asked to tell the history of the changing
landscape in Nunavut. These historical
Wrangling 2,500 characters, typewriters eventually transformed office accounts were then compared to the
work, as well as the mass production of pamphlets, in Communist China permafrost samples collected by
scientists, helping to confirm the pattern
THE CHINESE TYPEWRITER of environmental change. In Inuit
W
traditions, changes in the environment
Pioneering predictive text long before mobile phones, are often attributed to human actions.
Chinese engineers solved a wordy problem Fittingly, scientists today are using
Inuit evidence to convince the rest of
How do you make a typewriter for a a button. This unfortunately proved the world that climate change is exactly
language with over 50,000 characters? incredibly slow. Chinese typists could that: man-made.
This was the problem facing Chinese only manage about 20 words per
engineers in the early 20th century. At minute, whereas a professional Climate scientists are tapping
first, the solution seemed to lie in being secretary could reach 60 words per into knowledge developed
selective. Although there are over minute in English. This problem was by the Inuit inhabitants of
50,000 characters in Modern Standard ultimately solved by the invention of a Nunavut over millennia
Chinese, you can read a newspaper kind of predictive text. In the 1950s,
with knowledge of about 3,000. With Chinese engineers realised they could
this in mind, the first Chinese typewriter, massively increase the rate of typing by
developed in Shanghai in the 1910s, reorganising the characters on the tray.
featured just 2,500 characters. Better, Instead of arranging the characters
but still a lot more than could fit on a like a dictionary, Chinese engineers
keyboard. And so the Chinese grouped characters together which
typewriter featured a flat tray in which usually followed one another. With
all 2,500 metal characters sat. Communism on the rise, the character
The typist then moved a lever over for ‘socialism’ (shehui zhuyi) was
the tray, placing it above the exact placed next to ‘politics’ (zhengzhi) and
character they wanted before pressing ‘revolution’ (geming).

Instead of arranging the characters
like a dictionary, Chinese engineers

grouped characters together which James Poskett is assistant professor AKG IMAGES/ALAMY
in the history of science and technology
usually followed one another at the University of Warwick

36 The Story of Science & Technology