The Humble Beginnings
Around about 100 years ago people communicated either by handwritten letters, Morse code, smoke signals or used the typewriter. Nowadays we use computers to type letters and emails. Have you ever wondered where the layout of the keyboard came from? Well… around 1868 there was a man who went by the name of Christopher Latham Sholes. He was the main inventor of the first commercial typewriter.
Sholes also craftily ensured that the word “Typewriter” could be constructed using only the top row of letters. This was intended to aid salesmen when they were giving demonstrations.
The first shift-key typewriter (in which uppercase and lowercase letters are made available on the same key) didn’t appear on the market until 1878, and it was quickly challenged by another flavour which contained twice the number of keys, one for every uppercase and lowercase character. For quite some time these two alternatives vied for the hearts and minds of the typing fraternity, but the advent of a technique known as touch-typing favoured the shift-key solution, which thereafter reigned supreme.
The main rival
Efficiency expert August Dvorak came up with the Dvorak Keyboard, which he patented in 1936. Using his layout, the typist’s fingers spend 70% of their time on the home row and 80% of this time on their home keys. Thus, as compared to the approximately 120 words that can be constructed from the home row keys of the QWERTY keyboard, it is possible to construct more than 3,000 words on Dvorak’s home row. Also, Dvorak’s scheme reduces the motion of the hands by a factor of three, and improves typing accuracy and speed by approximately 50%, and 20%, respectively. Unfortunately, Dvorak didn’t really stand a chance trying to sell typewriters based on his new keyboard layout in the 1930s. Apart from the fact that existing typists didn’t wish to re-learn their trade, America was in the heart of the depression years, which meant that the last thing anyone wanted to do was to spend money on a new typewriter.
The Fastest
Mrs Barbara Blackburn of Salem, Oregon, USA, can maintain 150 wpm for 50 minutes (37,500 key strokes) and attains a speed of 170 wpm using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK) system. Her top speed was recorded at 212 wpm, (her error frequency is two-tenths of one percent)
Claim
QWERTY has been claimed to be the most commonly used password on the internet.
Final Thought
Why are the letters on the keyboard in CAPS – because when typed, they enter on screen in lower case? They only appear in CAPS if the ‘caps lock’ or shift keys are pressed…
I have tried to find this out but I’m still none the wiser. If anyone one knows then please share this, I would be very intrigued to find out.
