Time to retire QWERTY
August 15th, 2006QWERTY is 138 years old this year. It was invented by Christopher Scholes in 1868 to solve the then major problem preventing people from typing at speed. If adjacent keys were typed in rapid succession the keys stuck together in mid-air so that the typist had to stop and untangle the keys.
Thanks to the power of Remington, which bought the patent from Scholes and marketed it QWERTY has dominated the world of typewriting ever since. That dominance has continued into the computer age so that all computer keyboards for English and European languages are engraved with the QWERTY layout.
Touch typing was not invented until eight years after QWERTY. But the men at Remington did not have to learn it. They had scores of women, who went off on a one-year course to learn QWERTY and to translate the dictated words, or the handwriting, of their bosses into typescript.
Today the vast majority of the millions who use computers do not have secretaries to input their words. And most of them manage with two or three fingers but they don’t know how quickly and easily they could learn to touch type.
What they do not know is that a far better keyboard layout was invented by August Dvorak in 1934 and that this layout is available on their computers in all the leading operating systems, such as Windows, Applemac , Linux and Unix. Find out how to use it by going to my typingbytouch site.
The minority who have heard of Dvorak are deterred from making the change because the computers they have to use do not have the Dvorak layout printed on the keyboard. Although once you have learnt to touch type this does not matter because your fingers have learnt to find the correct keys by touch, it is a substantial deterrent in the learning period.
Since Dvorak can be learnt in one third of the time it takes to learn QWERTY most computer users could surpass their existing typing speed by no more than three or four weeks practice for half an hour a day. But many are unlikely to make the effort until the leading manufacturers produce keyboards which have both the QWERTY and the keyboard layouts on the keyboard.
This is highly unlikely to happen if left to the forces of the free market because, although the investment required is quite small, there is no prospect of the change leading to bigger profits.
It is also unlikely that the public sector will fund such a move. Governments have many other priorities. Individual teachers, who may see the advantages of children and young people learning Dvorak, are not in a position to make the change while computers just have QWERTY engraved on their keyboards.
Change will only happen via the third way, the charitable sector. It requires a philanthropist, rich enough to fund the initial changes and to market them to a sceptical world.
Stand up Bill Gates, who has just announced that he is stepping down as the boss of Microsoft to devote himself to charitable works. The change would enable people to use the Microsoft software more efficiently. And the big beneficiaries would be the children of the world.
August 16th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
I can’t believe QWERTY was invented to slow people down, it does a good job doesn’t it?
Microsoft’s biggest products other than Windoze and Office are their keyboard and mouse. If Microsoft introduced a Dvorak keyboard then it would have a big impact.
I could actually think of a decent commercial argument for them (or anyone else) doing this – they could market it as an “easy-to-learn” keyboard and increase their sales. I think it would need to be a big player like Microsoft or Dell for it to have a big impact, though.
BTW – you don’t need to memorize the keys, you can buy stickers to put over your exisitng keyboard:
- http://www.hooleon.com/menu-dvorak.htm
- http://www.fentek-ind.com/dvorak.htm#labels
… or you can get a Dvorak keyboard for your PC
- http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=KBH&Product_Code=KB-0110
- http://stores.ebay.com/Ken-at-bays
August 16th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
I can’t believe QWERTY was invented to slow people down! It seems to have worked, at least in my case.
You can buy DVORAK keyboards for your PC here:
http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=KBH&Product_Code=KB-0110
August 17th, 2006 at 6:20 am
It wasn’t. QWERTY was invented to speed people up on the typewriters which were being used in 1868 when there was a huge problem with adjacent keys sticking in a bunch stopping the typist altogether. It took many years for this problem to be eliminated by better typewriter design but it was eliminated completely on new manuals by the 1920s, and of course was never a problem with electric typewriters and computer keyboards.
The full story is on the Typing History page on my site. Follow the link on the sidebar headed The QWERTY enigma.
August 21st, 2006 at 7:20 am
catch 22 won’t have more Dvorak until more people use Dvorak and more
people won’t use Dvorak until there is more Dvorak out there.
The above is a comment on my article posted on the altkeyboards site.
Bang on. But only half right. The point is that Dvorak is out there on everone’s computer but they don’t know it is there and don’t know of its advantages.
August 21st, 2006 at 3:05 pm
This comes from another posting an the altkeyboard site.
It’s quite unfortunate, but I don’t think the SHOLES keyboard is
going away any time soon. Yeah, I know this has been hashed over
about a million times on this forum. But, really, how much should
this matter much to us? The members of this forum mostly are Dvorak
users, I’m guessing. We have the smarts and the know-how to get away
with covertly using our “outlaw” keyboard in a world despoiled and
besmirched by the Sholes keyboard.
What does it matter to us that the hordes toil on in blissful
ignorance of the existence of a superior keyboard? (Side note: I was
in a computer supply house the other day and saw a keyboard with
jumbo-sized keys called “My first keyboard” or something like that,
marketed toward very young children, and of course it was the
classic qwerty configuration, and I was utterly disgusted upon
examining the package).
October 3rd, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Good observation, your ideas are right on.
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