Eps 136: QWERTY

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Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson

Podcast Content
There are few things that surround us more closely than the keyboard layout of the QWERTY keyboard. This means that a significant part of our daily lives is deeply connected and biased to the fact that it was invented in the 1860s and more or less cobbled together to sell more typewriters. We know nothing about technical or computer terminals that require the cumbersome keyboard layouts we know today as QEWERTY. I am old enough to remember that in the age of typewriters I somehow got a Qwerty, and I know that nothing in technology, computers or terminals requires such a cumbersome keyboard layout as the keyboard layouts known today.
Since then, ergonomically designed keyboards have only reached critical mass when QWERTY has been trained in our brains and fingertips. If Qwerty keyboards are what people are trained to do, people make them because they are the best layout, not because it is actually the most efficient or even the simplest keyboard layout in the world. A keyboard that arranges letters and characters more efficiently will result in a keyboard with better performance and a better user experience.
As Noyes points out, the original QWERTY keyboard was designed to input touch input, which was designed when Sholes and Remington were working on the design of a QwerTY keyboard - style. When he patented it, there were no touch types, and the only popular method of recording it was hunting and pecking without visual feedback. Some have argued that it is the most efficient layout for the usual letters typists have on each finger.
The design of the QWERTY keyboard was designed like Morse code, with the most frequently used letters being sorted into the "Home" row. You may have heard that it was specifically designed to slow down typists working on traditional typewriters and machines, as they would often jam together in quick succession by pressing two adjacent letters.
According to Remington, words per minute increased by about 80% during this time, and if the QWERTY keyboard had been properly trained, we would have seen a large increase in words per minute.
In any case, we now know that swapping an elegant Dvorak keyboard for a clunky QWERTY won't do much to slow down typists anyway. Either way, it doesn't seem convincing enough that we end up with the Qwerty keyboard.
A statistical analysis in 1949 showed that the QWERTY keyboard actually had more randomly arranged keyboard pairs. Dr Dvorak found that only 32% of the input on the home keyboard row was made on a Qwerty keyboard. In addition, the Sholes typewriter prototype had a different keyboard layout, which had been changed only shortly after the application for the "QWERty" patent was filed. It is said that a "qwerTY" keyboard was created to separate keys and prevent the keys of typewriters from blocking.
Although later typewriter designs quickly eliminated the problem of key clamping, the QWERTY keyboard layout remained the same. This caused typists to switch from hunting and picking to memorizing the "QWERty" keyboard layout, and thus increased the speed of the Remington typist. As typewriter technology improved, however, it remained, not because it was the best layout, but because it was the layout that typewriters had been trained to operate.
The first to question the QWERTY layout was August Dvorak, who invented and patented his layout in 1936. It took years for the next big brand to take hold, and it eventually had to turn its back on it. Although several alternative keyboards were developed in the following decades, none proved superior to the "QWER TYTY" layout. Despite the imminent dominance of other alternative keyboards trying to reach the market, most people chose to stick with it, even though typewriters used it as their primary keyboard layout for most of their lives.
It was a brilliant idea to train typists to memorize a certain keyboard layout, which made the QWERTY standard fundamentally for better or worse. Tap courses with the "QWER TYTY" keyboard layout and demand that the typist does not look at the keyboard but "memorizes" the keys. With only 17 changes to the keyboards, this method is considered easier than Dvorak's, because people are already used to typing on a QEWERTY keyboard.
When comparing the QWERTY layout with the Dvorak / Colemak layout, there are a few things to consider. Compare them to make an informed decision about which layout is best for you. Although neither model is currently considered a world standard, you can choose from a variety of designs while using the keyboard.
The QWERTY standard was set a long time ago and people are used to using it, but it is a more streamlined layout that many people do not follow.
However, some users claim that Dvorak has a shorter learning curve than QWERTY because you learn to type from scratch. Some people use the Colemak layout, as opposed to the standard QwerTY, to make typing more comfortable and efficient. Qewerty typists have achieved the most world records in typing speed held by the Dvoraak typist.