Keyboards and their Qwerty History

Ever wonder about the seemingly random arrangement of the keys on a common computer keyboard, better known as the QWERTY keyboard? The QWERTY arrangement of keys was actually invented with the idea of slowing typists down – but why? Before the personal computer age, if we were using any type of keyboard with letters and numbers on them, we were using a typewriter. For those familiar with the mechanical operation of the older typewriters, each key on the keyboard actuates an arm (called a typebar) which literally swings up and strikes the page. As typists became more proficient, they were soon typing beyond the practical design parameters of the typebar design, and the arms were colliding and getting tangled with each other. In order to separate frequently used letter combinations and common letter pairs, these pairs and combinations were set farther apart, effectively slowing down the typist. The original QWERTY design was patented by Christopher Sholes, who also happened to invent the typewriter, in 1868. The design was later adopted by the Remington Arms Company, who bought the typewriter patent from Sholes, and then later sold it to The Standard Typewriter company. The Remingon name remained on their typewriters, and their typewriters continued with the QWERTY keyboard layout.

So this raises the question of why we continue to use the QWERTY layout with our computer keyboards; we are no longer burdened with the mechanical typebar problems, so why should we continue with an obsolete keyboard design? There are two reasons; the first is familiarity: any typist over 35 probably learned to type on an old-fashioned typewriter in high school, and that means that an overwhelming majority of us adapted our keyboarding skills to the PC. Consequently, the cost of retraining the typists to a new layout would be astronomical. The second reason is that the QWERTY design was intended to balance the use of both hands, to eliminate the situation of having too many one-handed words, such as “stewardess” (left-handed word) and “monopoly” (right-handed word). If you happen to be a touch-typist you will notice that most words require the fingers of both hands. In this sense, the QWERTY layout remains as a good design.

And so we continue to use a design that was originally intended to cope with a mechanical design which has long since disappeared. There have been many other proposed designs but none have really caught on, perhaps the best known is the Dvorak keyboard layout, which claims to be more efficient but in reality is seldom seen.

What I personally find surprising is that the modern computer’s Voice Recognition capabilities are not more often exploited by non-typists as an alternative input method. Any computer with Office XP offers the use of voice, and other brands of Voice Recognition software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking are available. Perhaps the general public don’t know that the feature is available, or maybe, like me, they are just trying to find a place where nobody is talking.