So, to summarize, the original typewriter layout (1868) was alphabetical, with the top row (A-N) going left-to-right and the bottom row (O-Z) going right-to-left. Then (1870), the vowels (including Y) were pulled out and put in a separate top row. After that (by 1872), changes were made in order to better support the use case of people receiving Morse code, and that's when we finally start to see something that looks like QWERTY. Additional changes later got it to the modern form, but by 1872 something QWERTY-like was in place.
And yeah -- if you look at the bottom two rows of a QWERTY keyboard, you can still see what remains of that alphabetical ordering, being left-to-right on one row followed by right-to-left on the row below!
In the next century, researchers will discover that the GUI wasn't designed to make computing harder by forcing people to find cryptic little symbols, randomly arranged on the screen, and break routine operations into tiny sequences of manual steps. And it wasn't called a "personal computer" because it turned each person into a computer.
"A common misunderstanding is that GUIs were invented to give ancient computers enough time for processing by slowing down user input speed. However our research shows that counterintuitively input latency was better at the time when GUIs were invented and then gradually got worse..."
> GUI wasn't designed to make computing harder by forcing people to find cryptic little symbols
That was absolutely the result of moving to a 2d-ui: icon spam and little discoverability. I can't say I've ever wanted an icon toolbar when I have a menu right there that's activated by common keystrokes without clogging my screen.
Of course, some people only know "save" as a floppy-disk icon. Good luck raising them the remaining way.
Ha. so the reason that I is next to 8 is that early typewriters used the I as a 1(no independent 1 key) and the morse transcription company wanted to type years(1871) quickly. I love it.
"The legend was referred by Prof. James V. Wertsch,[22, 23] a professor of the Department of Psychology, Clark University, then it was regarded as an established theory in the field of psychology. "
The reproducibility crisis struck early, it seems.
Humans do not have fins, but Micheal Phelps can still cut through water. That elites can thrive is not a compelling argument when most people just want technology to get out of the way.
An alternative layout with commonly used symbols on the home row makes the QWERTY deficiencies immediately apparent. Significantly less effort required for writing prose when using something like DVORAK.
I really don't think people who type slowly do so because of QWERTY. Anecdotally, my dad basically isn't able to develop muscle memory for the key locations and will frequently revert to the "scan and then press with one finger" method. You could give him any layout and he would still type slowly. Pretty sure even an alphabetical order would trip him up, because it'd need to be broken into multiple rows, so he'd need muscle memory again.
And while this is speculative, given how close typing speeds seem on a cursory search between layouts, this suggests to me that the vast majority of the performance comes not from the layout, but from touch typing and effective use of multiple hands and fingers at the same time. All layout agnostic skills.
This is not to say that on an input method level, things cannot be further improved. I sometimes see stenography [0] related software and demonstrations on YouTube for example. It also isn't to say that there cannot be a benefit health wise (i.e. ergonomically) to alternative layouts. It's just that for speed I'm not convinced it affects much, and so I think it's the wrong thing to try and change. Especially considering that sometimes things that are suboptimal can be better by being the standard.
Dvorak is way more comfortable and is very fast for me, but its emphasis on alternating hands causes me to frequently invert pairs of letters when typing fast, probably because my left and right brain isn't perfectly coordinated.
I have considered switching to Colemak, which is supposed to have less of that, but as a 100+ wpm typer of Dvorak it really is diminishing returns.
I got into alternate keyboard layouts and developed my own (roughly an optimized NIRO). When I tried using it on my small Surface Go I found that my fingers would 'jam' typing letters close together, so I leave that in QWERTY so it happens much less.
Yeah it isn't the reason but I do have to say that typing on a pc is nothing like a mechanical typewriter especially an ancient one.
You really had to give the keys a hard whack and had to push them all the way down. It was pretty heavy and the hammers could really get stuck. All this did really limit typing speed.
When I was in school we had an optional typing course and I was encouraged to do it as a computer nerd. But I never thought it was relevant as they didn't even use electric typewriters. They wanted to teach the ability to hit every key with the same amount of force. A skill that is completely useless these days obviously. These days we hit keys with the least amount of force and our colleagues thank us for it :)
Even at a bit less than 200WPM, my physical ability to press keys is seldom the limiting factor for composing prose, let alone for coding. I would suspect that this is the case for most halfway competent keyboard users using more than three fingers, and that QWERTY is “good enough”.
The keyboard arrangement was incidentally changed into QWERTY, first to receive telegraphs, then to thrash out a compromise between inventors and producers, and at last to evade old patents.
Interesting article. The connection to Morse code makes a lot of sense (C being similar to S). The requirement to move I below 8 to type 1870 or 1871 quickly is hilarious in retrospect. At the time who could have known the decision to focus on efficiency for the coming decade could be so enduring?
This still doesn’t explain one of my biggest peeves with keyboards:
Why are the keys angled up and to the left — for both hands?
Was this to solve the type bar jamming?
Or is that also an urban legend?
I know there are modern keyboards that solve this, by either splitting the keyboard and angling in the natural direction of your fingers (so to the right for the left hand, and vice versa), or just ortholinear keyboards that have straight rows of keys (but still angled ergonomically).
But that ridiculousness has lived on, such that even “economic” split keyboards will still angle both sides to the left.
The key levers had to be staggered on their way back to the type bars so they wouldn't hit each other. The angle isn't ergonomic in origin but mechanical. You probably haven't ever seen a mechanical typewriter, but maybe you can find one to experiment with, or at least a YouTube video showing the workings.
> You probably haven't ever seen a mechanical typewriter
Really? I see them all over the place. They're very rarely used for typing (except by hipsters in parks) but the are tons used for decoration or in historical scenes.
Isn't this based on letter frequency? In languages like German, Z is a fairly common letter. Y not so much. Whereas in English it's the opposite. They put the more commonly used letter in the center.
Readit News
And yeah -- if you look at the bottom two rows of a QWERTY keyboard, you can still see what remains of that alphabetical ordering, being left-to-right on one row followed by right-to-left on the row below!
That was absolutely the result of moving to a 2d-ui: icon spam and little discoverability. I can't say I've ever wanted an icon toolbar when I have a menu right there that's activated by common keystrokes without clogging my screen.
Of course, some people only know "save" as a floppy-disk icon. Good luck raising them the remaining way.
The reproducibility crisis struck early, it seems.
Odd to see no mention of the Linotype layout, also known as the "Etaoin Shrdlu", given that was also a common competing keyboard layout in that era.
An alternative layout with commonly used symbols on the home row makes the QWERTY deficiencies immediately apparent. Significantly less effort required for writing prose when using something like DVORAK.
And while this is speculative, given how close typing speeds seem on a cursory search between layouts, this suggests to me that the vast majority of the performance comes not from the layout, but from touch typing and effective use of multiple hands and fingers at the same time. All layout agnostic skills.
This is not to say that on an input method level, things cannot be further improved. I sometimes see stenography [0] related software and demonstrations on YouTube for example. It also isn't to say that there cannot be a benefit health wise (i.e. ergonomically) to alternative layouts. It's just that for speed I'm not convinced it affects much, and so I think it's the wrong thing to try and change. Especially considering that sometimes things that are suboptimal can be better by being the standard.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
I have considered switching to Colemak, which is supposed to have less of that, but as a 100+ wpm typer of Dvorak it really is diminishing returns.
You really had to give the keys a hard whack and had to push them all the way down. It was pretty heavy and the hammers could really get stuck. All this did really limit typing speed.
When I was in school we had an optional typing course and I was encouraged to do it as a computer nerd. But I never thought it was relevant as they didn't even use electric typewriters. They wanted to teach the ability to hit every key with the same amount of force. A skill that is completely useless these days obviously. These days we hit keys with the least amount of force and our colleagues thank us for it :)
They were future proofing though: the "I" is between "8" and "9", so they were optimising for the next 130 years, not merely coming decades.
Why are the keys angled up and to the left — for both hands?
Was this to solve the type bar jamming?
Or is that also an urban legend?
I know there are modern keyboards that solve this, by either splitting the keyboard and angling in the natural direction of your fingers (so to the right for the left hand, and vice versa), or just ortholinear keyboards that have straight rows of keys (but still angled ergonomically).
But that ridiculousness has lived on, such that even “economic” split keyboards will still angle both sides to the left.
Really? I see them all over the place. They're very rarely used for typing (except by hipsters in parks) but the are tons used for decoration or in historical scenes.
(Z an Y are swapped... mostly a non issues, except with some games, where Z and X are some gameplay controls, and we have a Y down there)