Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsThe Lies You've Been Told About the Origin of the QWERTY Keyboard
The first time I heard the lie, I was in fifth grade. Mr. Ward took me aside (or maybe he told the whole class, it was a long time ago) to tell me about the wonders of Dvorak, a different keyboard layout that was scientifically designed to be more efficient than the standard layout. That layout was called QWERTY, he explained, and it had been created to slow typists down. You see, in the olden days, mechanical typewriters could jammed if people hit the keys too quickly, so they had to put the common letters far apart from each other. The modern keyboard, I was told, was a holdover of the mechanical age.
Since then, I've heard this story repeated a thousand times. So many times, I had assumed it was true. But Jimmy Stamp over at Smithsonian points to evidence released by Japanese researchers that, in fact, the story is bunk. The QWERTY keyboard did not spring fully formed from Christopher Sholes, the first person to file a typewriter patent with the layout. Rather, it formed over time as telegraph operators used the machines to transcribe Morse code. The layout changed often from the early alphabetical arrangement, before the final configuration came into being.
The researchers tracked the evolution of the typewriter keyboard alongside a record of its early professional users. They conclude that the mechanics of the typewriter did not influence the keyboard design. Rather, the QWERTY system emerged as a result of how the first typewriters were being used. Early adopters and beta-testers included telegraph operators who needed to quickly transcribe messages. However, the operators found the alphabetical arrangement to be confusing and inefficient for translating morse code. The Kyoto paper suggests that the typewriter keyboard evolved over several years as a direct result of input provided by these telegraph operators.
That is to say, the lesson of the QWERTY story remains the resilience of a design created for an outmoded technology's dictates. QWERTY is still an example of technological momentum. But the development of the design wasn't accidental or silly: it was complex, evolutionary, and quite sensible for Morse operators.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-lies-youve-been-told-about-the-origin-of-the-qwerty-keyboard/275537/
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
3 replies, 1447 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (4)
ReplyReply to this post
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
The Lies You've Been Told About the Origin of the QWERTY Keyboard (Original Post)
ashling
May 2013
OP
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,632 posts)1. That's very cool, my dear ashling, and thank you!
sir pball
(4,743 posts)2. QWERTY is too entrenched to ever change.
Regardless of the origins or the efficiency, I got $20 on the PADD virtual keyboard being QWERTY. (Damn, that's easy to type.)
Voice recognition is the future but QWERTY will last as long as we have fingers.
ashling
(25,771 posts)3. .. .. . . ..- .- . .. . ... . . - - .. -. -..
I think Morse code could make a comeback