Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma

One of the highlights of my early career in tech was the development in the mid-1980s of (perhaps) the first Burmese-language word processor. The immediate request came from the US State Department, but because my firm had a VP of Burmese-Chinese extraction, the Burmese government was also contacted. A visit to Rangoon ensued.

The objectives were banal – to study keyboards and type – but the short visit quickly became surreal: lessons from the then-Science Minister in the Burmese script which I by then already knew, manual typewriters and an ancient Mergenthaler typesetting machine that clanked and clanged like a steam engine and for which type was no longer manufactured, forcing writers to forswear words containing elements which had physically worn out.