The origin of the Qwerty Keyboard

How the QWERTY keyboard came about:

Did you ever feel that the QWERTY keyboard was just absolutely awkward, inefficient and time-consuming to use? Afterall, why place the keys on the keyboard the way it is today? It's not as if the most commonly used letters are placed together...

If you have no idea what I'm talking abt, look down at your keyboard right now... notice that the first few alphabets on the keyboard says QWERTY? Yap. You are looking at the QWERTY keyboard.

So who's the guy behind the QWERTY keyboard?

Sholes, a U.S mechanical engineer, invented the first practical modern typewriter, patented in 1868.

However, there was a problem with the typewriter as it jams up easily (think of the ancient four tiered typewriter whose keys tend to fly up and stick together)

To reduce the possibility of it jamming up, James Densmore,a Business associate, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing.

The salemen for the typewriter then decided to use the QWERTY system because if you look carefully, notice that you can type the word 'typewriter' without ur fingers ever leaving the top row? Heh. Legend has it that the salemen arranged the words this way to impress the buyers on how they can type the word 'typewriter' without ever needing to lift their fingers off the first row. (cue: woah~ so smart~~)

As the typewriter slowly evolved to the keyboard, the QWERTY system held its place and is now the most well used system.

This is despite the fact that there is a better system called the Dvorak keyboard. What's so good abt the Dvorak keyboard?

With the Dvorak keyboard, a typist can type about 400 of the English language's most common words without ever leaving the home row (middle row). The comparable figure on QWERTY is 100. The home row letters on Dvorak do a total of 70% of the work. On QWERTY they do only 32%.

you: WOAH~ If it is that good then why dun we all switch to the Dvorak system??

Well, cos it is just too troublesome to relearn a new keyboard. and besides if you are already a very good typist, the keyboard layout wouldnt do much difference... You'll probably be faster, but the time needed to relearn the keyboard and master the keyboard is probably not worth it. =p

Aiyah. it just means we are all lazy bums that's y we din change the keyboard layout lar. =p

p.s. this is a mere reproduction of my older post of trivia on the other blog. Anyway, realised that there's very few comments. sob sob. hehe. tell me whether u all found the trivias useful/silly/entertaining or wat lar. or suggest some new topics lar. =p

btw, most information is taken from my previous module: Simplicity as well as several websites off google cos i dun remember the dates and figures.