How did the Chinese type their language before computers?

Today, you can just type pinyin and the computer would automatically change it into characters, but what did they do when conversion programmes and computers didn't exist? Did they have a big typewriter with thousands of characters? Or did people just have to write everything out? How did they print newspapers?

How did the Chinese type their language before computers?virus protection software

Oh, they had chinese key boards, like part of a charecter then type another and it mixes 2gethrr

How did the Chinese type their language before computers?adware

The Chinese were the first to invent movable type? So, it's either printing press or the Chinese typewriter.
Print presses like with each formation already made...same was done with urdu during days of british
there was a machine like the writting machine or typing machine (not quite sure the correct english name)each key was one of the lines that form a chinese characters and in order to type a character you'll have to go through each line something still used nowadays in chinese language and grammar, i think you know nothing about chinese grammar so im not gonna make it more difficult for you, but! we can also type chinese in the computers without using the pinyin system using as a i said the lines
They typed a set of numbers corresponding to certain characters.The CKC Chinese Input System uses a maximum of 4 digits (''0'' - ''9'') to represent a Chinese character. All possible shapes of strokes that forms any given Chinese character are classified into 10 groups, each represented by one of the ten possible digits 0-9. Chinese characters can then be input by following the order in which the strokes are identified at the 4 corners of the character. As a result of this simplicity in coding using the ten numeric digits, users typically need to use only a numeric keypad to input Chinese.