![]() But as Koichi Yasuoka and Motoko Yasuoka, two researchers at Japan’s Kyoto University, noted back in 2011, there were no professional typists back when Sholes was busy shuffling the alphabet. World War Two-era research suggesting that Dvorak typists could rattle off assignments 74 percent faster than their Qwerty-using colleagues has since been discredited, but if you take the time to actually look at it, the Qwerty layout doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.Īnother theory behind its evolution is that it arranged all the letters needed to type ‘typewriter’ on the same top row, enabling salesmen to speedily tap out the instrument’s name and wow prospective customers. Not such a concern in the age of the delete key, though Dvorak’s 21st Century fans also tout it as a fix for repetitive strain injury. The article sounded the death knoll for that “laborious and unsatisfactory” instrument, the pen, soon to be set down in favour of “playing on the literary piano”.Īccording to Dvorak, a text that required the average typist’s fingers to travel up to 20 miles on a Qwerty keyboard clocked up only one mile using his system, all thanks to ergonomic benefits that also cut down on many common typos. Having already tried to build machines for typesetting and printing numbers, Sholes’ adventures in type began in 1867, when he read an article in Scientific American describing the Pterotype, a prototype typewriter invented by one John Pratt. He was also one of a team of inventors credited with building the first commercially viable typewriter. Born in small-town Pennsylvania in 1819, Sholes was many things, including newspaper editor and Wisconsin state senator. The letters on a typewriter are affixed to metal arms, which are activated by the keys on early models, if a lever was activated before its neighbour had fully come back down to rest, they would jam, forcing the typist to stop. In fact, the Qwerty layout was concocted to prevent keys from jamming – or at least, that’s what most experts have tended to believe. One character even lectures another about it in a Paulo Coelho novel. So why change this logical layout? Legend has it that Qwerty – known for the jabberwocky-style word formed by the first six letters of its top row – was dreamt up with the express purpose of slowing typists down. The earliest typewriters were cumbersome, moody machines but there was nevertheless an order to their keys that any English-speaking user could readily glean: they were arranged alphabetically.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |