Yet it is also the ultimate software - hard-wired into tens of millions of brains and hundreds of millions of fingers around the world. It is the ultimate user-machine interface - replicated on the keyboards of computers, and some of the most sophisticated PDAs and mobile phones across the world. Yet it is pretty much unchanged since it was standardised in the s. And you notice it's being towed to the runway by donkeys. Better still, camels," explains comedian Stephen Fry, the presenter of a new series on BBC Radio 4 that kicks off with a look at the origins of Qwerty.
And like the metaphorical camel, it was designed by way of a series of compromises. In the USA in the post civil war era, standardisation became all.
The new world was to be a mechanical one. A typist had to fit any typewriter. There was hot competition to create a single typewriter standard. The inventor of the Qwerty keyboard was Christopher Sholes, a Milwaukee port official, Wisconsin senator, sometime newspaper editor and a man who tried to invent not "a" typewriting machine, but "the" typewriting machine. The challenge was mechanical; to devise a system which linked an easily understandable interface with the complicated technology of ink, typebars, levers and springs.
His first attempt was alphabetical, but the typebars clashed due to the key arrangements. So Sholes arranged them in a way to make the machine work. Frequency and combinations of letters had to be considered to prevent key clashes.
The typewriter wars heated with the appearance of typing competitions, where typists would battle it out to achieve the highest word counts.
Not surprisingly, type would clash and stick. So Sholes, it is alleged, rejigged the letters on his machine in order to keep speeds down. In , Qwerty was adopted by Remington, famous for its arms and sewing machines as well as its typewriters, and it became adopted as the basis not only for English but the majority of European languages as well. But did Sholes really doctor the configuration of letters to slow the typist?
Would an inventor really hobble his own brainchild? This keyboard layout became standard with the popularity of the Remington typewriter which was the first to use it, and all other manufacturers fell in line. So here we are, more than years later, using a keyboard layout designed to fix a problem that no longer exists.
How many people today use a typewriter? How many have even seen one? Over the decades, many people have tried to introduce a culture shift with keyboards that make more sense. Like this one, called the Dvorak layout see Dvorak Simplified Keyboard , which is designed to increase typing speed.
Because everyone has somehow learned to use it, and most of us have become so good at it that we type without even having to look at the individual keys any more. To get used to a different layout would almost be like learning a different language. Know which demographic finds it easiest to learn a new language? This one:. Learning to use an ABCDEF keyboard at around the same time as they are learning the alphabet is the best way to introduce a mindshift with keyboards.
So if we want to leave the s behind and step into the brave new world of , it might be best to have the kids show us the way. In the s, that company built and sold the first commercially successful typewriters.
For years or so after the Remington typewriter arrived, vast numbers of people all over the world trained to become touch typists meaning they could type even without looking much at the keyboard.
They were employed to type letters and all other kinds of things for business and government. Because so many people became so skilled at using QWERTY, it became very difficult to get everyone to change to any other key arrangement.
Many other key arrangements have been tried. It seems that we are stuck with this layout, even if jams are no longer a problem. Some other languages use variations. Ask them to show you the keyboard they use in their language.
Now, on any keyboard, feel the F and J keys carefully and find some tiny bumps. Place your first fingers on those keys, and your other fingers along the same row. Keep your fingers resting lightly on the home keys. Type other letters by moving just one finger up or down and perhaps a little sideways. Learn how to do that quickly, without watching your fingers, and you can touch type!
When I was a teenager, I owned a typewriter. I made a cardboard shield to stop me seeing my fingers as I typed. I used clothes pegs to fix it to the typewriter. Then I found a touch-typing book and started to practise, making sure that I kept my fingers on the home keys and always used the correct finger to type each letter.
After lots of practice, I could touch type. I love being able to touch type.
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