Ever Wondered About QWERTY Keyboard Layout? layout

[amitbhandari 0]

hi friends,Have you ever wondered about that qwertyui layout of the keyboard?Why is it being designed that way?Well,I was the one to wonder about it. Why haven't they designed in abcdef way so that even kids find it easy to follow.I went to google for that. Mr. Google told me that earlier there were no computers but typewriters.The keys of typewriter were not that much responsive. They didn't response if hit at a fast pace. So to make the speed slow a new layout was designed which is the qwertyui layout you use. Now that qwertyui layout was so much used that they kept it going even when the response times of keys have improvedI hope you got something new from this post.Do post your comments.Regards.

[szupie 0]

I think the reason they designed the QWERTY layout is that the typewriters weren't very good back then, and the keys always got stuck if you kept using adjacent keys. So they had to rearrange the keys so that you would rarely hit two adjacent keys consecutively. If you noticed, most of the letters I'm using aren't consecutive to each other on the keyboard.At least, that's what I heard about the QWERTY layout.

[qwijibow 0]

I heard that the layout was to maximise typing speeds.the keys used most often (in the english language) are the most comfortable to reach.ALSO, trying to arange the keys so that both hands are always beeing used...one hand pushing a key while the oher hand was moving into position to take anouther key..e.g. "Hello World" == Right, Left, Right(Double L), Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left.Maybe there is a wikki somewhere

[AdityaKar 0]

....The keys of typewriter were not that much responsive. They didn't response if hit at a fast pace. So to make the speed slow a new layout was designed which is the qwertyui layout you use.
....

No, I don't think that is quite the reason. If at all the reason was to slow down the typing speed then the design layout would have never been carried forward to modern day keyboards. And even with the QWERTY(pronounced as kwer-tee) layout people can type at extremely fast speeds.
I did a little search and I found out that QWERTY layout was introduced in 1872 on a typewriter by its inventor Christopher Shole. Thought the reason why this layout was selected is not exactly known, it is believed that in this layout the common letter pairs were put on opposite sides of the keyboard thus, making typing easier. Some other layouts have also been presented such as Dvorak, which claim to be superior than QWERTY.
One interesting thing to note about QWERTY is that all the letters of the TYPEWRITER is on the top row of this design.

[Quatrux 4]

That is quite interesting, I never what about why this layout for keyboards were chosen, but as you told a lot about the basics of this, I can add only one thing, that in different countries some places of keyboard might be different, for example I remember I was using a German keyboard, where the Y and Z letters were in different places, so it was really hard to adopt for me, especially when having several computers at home. Moreover, I had an older computer, as I remember it was an Amiga, the letter A was in another side of the layout not for from the Enter key.. so when talking on IRC I usually was mistyping it and a letter was missing, because the real place where the letter A by QWERTY needed to be, was a blank button. :SIn addition, the keyboard layout also matter by not the key places, but how it is designed, how your fingers and arms are placed. When browsing through those expensive keyboards for computers, I feel I want one.

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Very interesting discussion. Anyone ever used the other alternative layout called DVORAK (I think)..

 

I found the following Wikipedia entry on the Dvorak Layout

????[/tab]The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (pronounced /'dvorĂŚk/) is a keyboard layout designed by Dr. August Dvorak and William Dealey in the 1920s and 1930s as an alternative to the more common QWERTY layout. It has also been called the Simplified Keyboard or American Simplified Keyboard, but is commonly known as the Dvorak keyboard.

 

????Dvorak and Dealey studied letter frequencies and the physiology of the hand and created the layout to adhere to these principles:

It is easier to type letters alternating between hands.

For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters and digraphs should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest.

Likewise, the least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach.

The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.

It is more difficult to type digraphs with adjacent fingers than non-adjacent fingers.

Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that when rapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.

????The layout was completed in 1932 and was granted U.S. Patent 2,040,248 in 1936. It was designated an alternate standard keyboard layout by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1982. In 1984 the Dvorak keyboard had an estimated 100,000 users.

 

????Also, due to some of the above principles and other preferences, there is considerable variation between implementations in the placement of punctuation on the English layout.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard

 

Dvorak Layout Diagram: http://dvorak.mwbrooks.com/layout.html

 

 

There's a Wikipedia entry on the QWERTY keyboard too...

????QWERTY (pronounced /ˈkwɝti/) is the most common modern-day keyboard layout on most English language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six letters seen in the keyboard's top row of letters. The QWERTY design was patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873, when it first appeared in typewriters.

 

????Frequently used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document. The home row (ASDFGHJKL) of the QWERTY layout is thought to be a remnant of the old alphabetical layout that QWERTY replaced. QWERTY also attempted to alternate keys between hands, allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes home a key. This sped up both the original double-handed hunt-and-peck technique and the later touch typing technique; however, single-handed words such as stewardesses and monopoly show flaws in the alternation.

 

[tab]It has often been noted that the word typewriter can be typed entirely using the top row of the QWERTY keyboard: it has been speculated that this may have been a factor in the choice of keys for ease of demonstration, although it is unlikely that engineers would create the key setup around a sales gimmick.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty

 

That explains quite a bit of it... now I need to find more on the actual process by which they came up with those layouts and the research involved...

[iGuest 3]

I heard that the layout was to maximise typing speeds.

Actually it's the complete opposite. There were so many spelling mistakes because people were typing too fast on the old layout that they reorganised it to slow people down. But now poeple can type just as fast now, if not faster than before, but there aren't as many spelling mistakes. This layout makes people think about where they're putting their fingers so it minimizes mistakes.

This is what I heard a few days back. In ICT I think...

[Sarah81 0]

Dvorak's a nice alternative - one that I've tried once or twice but just couldn't catch onto.But really: QUERTY is a good layout because the most commonly-used letters are on the "home row." That's just easiest, for me anyway.That and I, like most people who learned to type on QWERTY setups, am just so used to this that I can't imagine changing to anything else.

[szupie 0]

There's a Wikipedia entry on the QWERTY keyboard too...

[tab][/tab]Frequently used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document.Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty

Yay, so I was right. I wonder where I got that information...

Very interesting discussion. Anyone ever used the other alternative layout called DVORAK (I think)..

I was just researching about that layout a few days ago. I think it's much better than QWERTY (though I've never tried to use it), since all the keys on the home row match the most frequently used keys according to my WhatPulse.
The amazing thing is that new layouts are still being developed right now. There is a layout called Colemak that was released January this year. But I don't really see the point of this. Since a keyboard is very important to interaction between the user and the computer, it'll be very hard for people to consider switching to another method of typing. Even a slight difference in the movement of the mouse can cause great discomfort. I've used the mouse on a Windows computer for many years, and I'm used to the ratio between the movement of my hand to the movement of the cursor on the screen. When I got a Mac, the speed of the mouse was just slightly different (I can't configure it to move exactly like on Windows), and it has discouraged me from using the Mac.
It's like going to the doctors to replace your normal leg with a fully functional, yet different, prosthetic leg. Even if you can use it, it still makes it weird.

[cyborgxxi 0]

When I first started learning how to type I loathed it and wanted to quit and wondered why in the world they didn't just do abc. I still wonder why but hey now that I can you the qwerty system why change? I think that it is kind of ridiculous to try to come up with a new system of typing when the old one works just fine. But hey if someone wants to waste time arranging keys on a board, their problem.Just my humble opinion

[wutske 0]

And what about AZERTY ???My guess is that azerty was made so because it would be more easy to write in some languages. Anyway, I have no problem writing english/dutch/french using azerty

[Logan Deathbringer 0]

The reason that the D'vorak key layout was designed was that they were trying to speed up the typing process and make it a more flowing system. As for the advent of the touch typing input to a computer, well the D'vorak key layout and the others since actually make more sense, due to the fact that speed is of the essence these days and not the worry of the type bars getting tied up in a massive mess and ruining a very expensive type writer and wasting a lot of money and time to replace it or fix it and the down time of the person who was using it. Which is the reason that the QWERTY key layout was designed.

[iceblade1405241492 0]

I heard that it was because a type writer maker (as many have said on this thread already...) was frusterated because people were typing too fast. And for some reason or another he couldn't speed up his type writer. So, he changed the keyboard layout so people would be slower while they learned the new layout. I have no idea what he was going to do if people had gotten accustomed to that before typing was sped up, but thats the story I heard. Also, I guess since people have just used it ever since way back then, its just whats stuck.For me, I am not sure I could change to a new keyboard. I mean, I am in the younger crowd on this website, but I have used this keyboard plenty long enough I think that a different keyboard would defiently throw me. But, it'd be something new and exciting I guess. Kind of like trying a new OS or something...

[littleweseth1405241521 0]

Screw conventional flat keyboards, I wanna get me a pair of these :

https://www.datahand.com/

The idea is that you never have to move your wrists ever, which helps avoid RSI.

[Opethian 0]

If and only if, the QWERTY keyboard was not so standard, I would have changed to the DVORAK keyboard a long time ago. Yeah, I was pretty much moved by the cartoons! LoLLers.