标签: keyboard

  Of particular interest to us is the fact that an analysis of the average typewritten document reveals that the usage of the alpha keys by row is as follows (note that these values exclude the use of the numeric and punctuation keys): - Top row (Q, W, E, R, ...) = 52% - Middle row (A, S, D, F, ...) = 32% - Bottom row (Z, X, C, V, ...) = 16% Thus, it becomes apparent that users' fingers spend only around one third of the time in their root position on the home row; the rest of the time they are stretching and straining to reach the keys on the other rows. Now, just in case you feel that the QWERTY keyboard is an unduly harsh punishment that's been sent to try us – it's worth remembering that the early users had a much harder time than we do, not the least that they couldn't even see what they were typing! This was due to the fact that the first typewriters struck the paper from the underside, which obliged their operators to raise the carriage whenever they wished to see what had just been typed, and so-called visible-writing machines didn't become available until 1883. And finally, before we leap into the next topic, some additional points of interest are as follows: - Sholes 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 terms uppercase and lowercase were handed down to us by the printing industry, from the compositors' practice of storing the type for capital letters and small letters in two separate cases. When working at the type-setting table, the compositors invariably kept the capital letters and small letters in the upper and lower cases, respectively; hence, uppercase and lowercase. Prior to this, scholars referred to capital letters as majuscules and small letters as minuscules, while everyone else simply called them capital letters and small letters. - Nothing's simple in this world. For example, instead of the top row of characters saying QWERTY, keyboards in France and Germany spell out AZERTY and QWERTZU, respectively. The Dvorak keyboard Almost anyone who spends more than a few seconds working with a QWERTY keyboard quickly becomes convinced that they could do a better job of laying out the keys. Many brave souls have attempted the task, but few came closer than efficiency expert August Dvorak in the 1930s. When he turned his attention to the typewriter, Dvorak spent many tortuous months analyzing the usage model of the QWERTY keyboard (now there's a man who knew how to have a good time). The results of his investigation were that, although the majority of users were right-handed, the existing layout forced the weaker left hand (and the weaker fingers on both hands) to perform most of the work. Also, as discussed in the previous topic, thanks to Sholes' main goal of physically separating letters that are commonly typed together, the typist's fingers were obliged to move in awkward patterns and only ended up spending 32% of their time on the home row. Dvorak took the opposite tack to Sholes, and attempted to find the optimal placement for the keys based on letter frequency and human anatomy. That is, he tried to ensure that letters which are commonly typed together would be physically close to each other, and also that the (usually) stronger right hand would perform the bulk of the work, while the left hand would have control of the vowels and the lesser-used characters. The result of these labors was the Dvorak Keyboard, which he patented in 1936:   In reality, Dvorak's keyboard also included shift keys, but these are omitted from this illustration for reasons of clarity. The results of Dvorak's innovations were tremendously effective, because the usage of the alpha keys by row is as follows (once again, these values exclude the use of the numeric and punctuation keys): - Top row (P, Y, F, G, ...) = 22% - Middle row (A, O, E, U, ...) = 70% - Bottom row (Q, J, K, X, ...) = 8% Thus, using Dvorak's 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 (or 10,000 words if you're talking to someone who's trying to sell you one). 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, which meant that the last thing anyone wanted to do was to spend money on a new typewriter. In fact, the Dvorak keyboard might have faded away forever, except that enthusiasts in Oregon, USA, formed a club in 1978, and they've been actively promoting Dvorak's technique ever since. Coupled with the ability to re-configure computer keyboards (as discussed later in this document), their activities have reawakened interest in the Dvorak keyboard, to the extent that it is now used by a few businesses and educational establishments. I'm sorry. I'll stop now. I could waffle on about this stuff for hours (be afraid, be very afraid). And don't even think about getting me started talking about the printing Telegraph, the advent of the Teleprinter, and the origin of the computer keyboard...  

A few weeks ago, my old friend Alan Winstanley in England sent me an email with a link to an article in the Telegraph newspaper. According to the articke, the world's last mechanical typewriter manufacturer – Godrej and Boyce, of India – now has only 500 units left in stock (they ceased production in 2009 and have now almost cleared their remaining inventory). This is a little sad in a nostalgic sort of way... not that any of us would ever again want to use a mechanical typewriter, of course, but still... I wonder how much one of these last-ever typewriters sells for; in a way it would be a collector's item. When you come to think about it, the typewriter actually had a fairly long run as a piece of mechanical technology that stayed in use for over 150 years (if you count the fact that there are still a few being used to this day). The first practical typewriter was conceived in 1867 by three American inventors and friends: Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samual W. Soulé. As an aside (on the off-chance you were interested): - Typewriter salesmen in the early 1900s were held in the same contempt that accident-chasing lawyers are today, because they used to pursue fire-fighters in the hope of selling new typewriters to burned-out businesses. - In the early 1920s, in order to indicate that businessmen were very busy, it became common for their letters to close with the words: "Dictated but not signed." In an effort at one-upmanship this was soon supplanted by the words: "Dictated but not read." Finally, in a surrealist attempt at Monty-Python foolishness, the yuppie-equivalent of the era started to use the words: "Dictated by transatlantic telephone and recorded on tape but not read and not signed," which, when you think about it, was almost a letter in itself! (Lawyers occasionally use similar terms to this day, thereby protecting themselves from inadvertent dictation and transcription errors; the result being that irrespective of how badly they do their job ... it's not their fault!) - In a 1930s survey of 16-year old girls across the United States, 32% stated that they wanted to grow up to be typists (which was seen as a glamorous profession) as opposed to only 5% who wanted to be film stars. Actually, before I wander off into the weeds as is my wont, I would like to show you a picture of an antique Underwood typewriter that usually graces the shelves of my study at home (I just put it on the table to get a better picture). This is well over 100 years old and – although you can't really see it – the space bar is a piece of wood (I think it's Oak, but I'm not an expert on this).     OK, now let's wander off into the weeds ... I can't help myself ... the following is abstracted from the history section of the book Bebop Bytes Back (An Unconventional Guide to Computers) that I co-authored with my chum Alvin Brown. This is replicated here with the kind permission of ... well, me, really... The Sholes (QWERTY) keyboard It is commonly believed that the original layout of keys on a typewriter was intended to slow the typist down, but this isn't strictly true. Sholes and his friends obviously wished to make their typewriters as fast as possible in order to convince people to use them. However, one problem with the first machines was that the keys (or rather, the hammer bars used to strike the paper) jammed when the operator typed at any real speed, so Sholes invented what was to become known as the Sholes keyboard:   As we see, the top row of keys was used for numbers, while the bottom three rows were used for the alpha characters (the blank keys in this illustration were used for punctuation and special characters). So why did Sholes decide upon this particular layout of the keys? Well, the term digraph refers to combinations of two letters that represent a single sound, such as "sh" in "ship," where these letters are frequently written or typed one after the other. What Sholes attempted to do was to separate the letters of as many common digraphs as possible so as to prevent the keys from jamming. But in addition to being a pain to use, the resulting layout also left something to be desired on the digraph front; for example, "ed", "er", "th", and "tr" all use keys that are close to each other. Happily, the jamming problem was eventually overcome by the use of springs that were used to quickly return the keys (hammer bars) to their initial positions, but the monster had been let loose amongst us – existing users didn't want to change and there was no turning back. The original Sholes keyboard (which is known to us as the QWERTY Keyboard, because of the ordering of the first six keys in the upper alpha-character row) is interesting for at least two other reasons: first, there was no key for the number '1', because the inventors decided that the users could get by with the letter 'I'; and second, there was no shift key, because the first typewriters could only type uppercase letters. 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 flavor 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 favored the shift-key solution, which thereafter reigned supreme. Speaking of touch-typing, the illustration of the Sholes keyboard above shows the 'A', 'S', 'D', and 'F' keys in white to indicate that these are the home keys for the left hand. Similarly, the other four keys shown in white are the home keys for the right hand. The terms home keys and home row refer to the base position for your fingers (excluding thumbs, which are used to hit the space bar) when you're practicing touch typing, which means that you type by touch without looking at the keyboard. However, Sholes didn't invent these terms, because he actually gave very little thought to the way in which people would use his invention. The end result was that everyone was left to their own devices, effectively meaning that two-fingered typists using the "hunt-and-peck" method ruled the world. It was not until 1888 that a law clerk named Frank E. McGurrin won a highly publicized typing contest with his self-taught touch-typing technique, and a new era was born. (In fact, McGurrin was proficient at touch typing ten years before the contest, because he'd been practicing in the evenings since 1876 so as to gain recognition as a fast worker. However, after receiving the $2 weekly pay-raise that he'd been looking for, he neglected to tell anyone else what he'd done.)  

A few weeks ago, my old friend Alan Winstanley in England sent me an email with a link to an article in the Telegraph newspaper. It says that the world's last mechanical typewriter manufacturer – Godrej and Boyce, of India – now has only 500 units left in stock (they ceased production in 2009 and have now almost cleared their remaining inventory). This is a little sad in a nostalgic sort of way... not that any of us would ever again want to use a mechanical typewriter, of course, but still... I wonder how much one of these last-ever typewriters sells for; in a way it would be a collector's item. When you come to think about it, the typewriter actually had a fairly long run as a piece of mechanical technology that stayed in use for over 150 years (if you count the fact that there are still a few being used to this day). The first practical typewriter was conceived in 1867 by three American inventors and friends: Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samual W. Soulé. As an aside (on the off-chance you were interested): - Typewriter salesmen in the early 1900s were held in the same contempt that accident-chasing lawyers are today, because they used to pursue fire-fighters in the hope of selling new typewriters to burned-out businesses. - In the early 1920s, in order to indicate that businessmen were very busy, it became common for their letters to close with the words: "Dictated but not signed." In an effort at one-upmanship this was soon supplanted by the words: "Dictated but not read." Finally, in a surrealist attempt at Monty-Python foolishness, the yuppie-equivalent of the era started to use the words: "Dictated by transatlantic telephone and recorded on tape but not read and not signed," which, when you think about it, was almost a letter in itself! (Lawyers occasionally use similar terms to this day, thereby protecting themselves from inadvertent dictation and transcription errors; the result being that irrespective of how badly they do their job ... it's not their fault!) - In a 1930s survey of 16-year old girls across the United States, 32% stated that they wanted to grow up to be typists (which was seen as a glamorous profession) as opposed to only 5% who wanted to be film stars. Actually, before I wander off into the weeds as is my wont, I would like to show you a picture of an antique Underwood typewriter that usually graces the shelves of my study at home (I just put it on the table to get a better picture). This is well over 100 years old and – although you can't really see it – the space bar is a piece of wood (I think it's Oak, but I'm not an expert on this).     OK, now let's wander off into the weeds ... I can't help myself ... the following is abstracted from the history section of the book Bebop Bytes Back (An Unconventional Guide to Computers) that I co-authored with my chum Alvin Brown. This is replicated here with the kind permission of ... well, me, really... The Sholes (QWERTY) keyboard It is commonly believed that the original layout of keys on a typewriter was intended to slow the typist down, but this isn't strictly true. Sholes and his friends obviously wished to make their typewriters as fast as possible in order to convince people to use them. However, one problem with the first machines was that the keys (or rather, the hammer bars used to strike the paper) jammed when the operator typed at any real speed, so Sholes invented what was to become known as the Sholes keyboard:   As we see, the top row of keys was used for numbers, while the bottom three rows were used for the alpha characters (the blank keys in this illustration were used for punctuation and special characters). So why did Sholes decide upon this particular layout of the keys? Well, the term digraph refers to combinations of two letters that represent a single sound, such as "sh" in "ship," where these letters are frequently written or typed one after the other. What Sholes attempted to do was to separate the letters of as many common digraphs as possible so as to prevent the keys from jamming. But in addition to being a pain to use, the resulting layout also left something to be desired on the digraph front; for example, "ed", "er", "th", and "tr" all use keys that are close to each other. Happily, the jamming problem was eventually overcome by the use of springs that were used to quickly return the keys (hammer bars) to their initial positions, but the monster had been let loose amongst us – existing users didn't want to change and there was no turning back. The original Sholes keyboard (which is known to us as the QWERTY Keyboard, because of the ordering of the first six keys in the upper alpha-character row) is interesting for at least two other reasons: first, there was no key for the number '1', because the inventors decided that the users could get by with the letter 'I'; and second, there was no shift key, because the first typewriters could only type uppercase letters. 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 flavor 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 favored the shift-key solution, which thereafter reigned supreme. Speaking of touch-typing, the illustration of the Sholes keyboard above shows the 'A', 'S', 'D', and 'F' keys in white to indicate that these are the home keys for the left hand. Similarly, the other four keys shown in white are the home keys for the right hand. The terms home keys and home row refer to the base position for your fingers (excluding thumbs, which are used to hit the space bar) when you're practicing touch typing, which means that you type by touch without looking at the keyboard. However, Sholes didn't invent these terms, because he actually gave very little thought to the way in which people would use his invention. The end result was that everyone was left to their own devices, effectively meaning that two-fingered typists using the "hunt-and-peck" method ruled the world. It was not until 1888 that a law clerk named Frank E. McGurrin won a highly publicized typing contest with his self-taught touch-typing technique, and a new era was born. (In fact, McGurrin was proficient at touch typing ten years before the contest, because he'd been practicing in the evenings since 1876 so as to gain recognition as a fast worker. However, after receiving the $2 weekly pay-raise that he'd been looking for, he neglected to tell anyone else what he'd done.)