So, a half remembered Radiolab episode or maybe it was 99% Invisible talked about this. If I remember rightly they did consider changing it because it was so much quicker and easier typing in English and Chinese character set takes up a lot of storage which was a big deal in early computers. Until someone figured they could break down all the Chinese characters into a much smaller selection of base shapes. So you could make a character by pressing a small selection of keys. So it meant a much more manageable keyboard. I think it’s even resulted in quick Chinese typists being faster than English ones.
So, a half remembered Radiolab episode or maybe it was 99% Invisible talked about this. If I remember rightly they did consider changing it because it was so much quicker and easier typing in English and Chinese character set takes up a lot of storage which was a big deal in early computers. Until someone figured they could break down all the Chinese characters into a much smaller selection of base shapes. So you could make a character by pressing a small selection of keys. So it meant a much more manageable keyboard. I think it’s even resulted in quick Chinese typists being faster than English ones.