The QWERTY keyboard

Q. How did it all start

A. The story of the QWERTY keyboard is almost as old as that of the typewriter itself. In 1867, Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee printer, filed a patent application for a mechanical writing machine. Unlike the manual typewriters you may remember, on Sholes's original machine the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows and the typebars - the rods with the letters on the end - hung in a circle underneath the roller which held the paper. When a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. A couple of problems arose with this design. First, because the printing point was underneath the paper carriage it was invisible to the typist. Second, the typebars tended to get entangled when two neighbouring bars were pressed in succession. Sholes worked for the next six years to try to eliminate these problems, trying mechanical changes and different keyboard arrangements.

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He eventually signed a deal with the arms company E. Remington & Sons in 1873 in order to have his invention commercially manufactured, and in 1874 the first 'Type Writer' - Remington's brand name for the product - appeared on the market, complete with the QWERTY layout in place. This only typed in capital letters, but the second model, released in 1878, typed in both upper and lower case. As it is, the addition of the shift key - so called because the key physically shifted the carriage - 124 years ago was the last major modification to date.

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Q. And why is it laid out the way it is

A. There are a couple of urban myths that need to got out of the way about this. The first - and an enduring one at that - is that the keyboard layout is deliberately designed to slow typists down and thus decrease the chances of the typebars getting snagged. How to do this Stop people typing so fast by giving them an illogically laid out keyboard. The second story is that the layout is such so that the Remington salesmen - in order to impress potential clients - could type the word 'typewriter' really quickly by placing their fingers on the top row of letter keys.

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The real reason does in fact relate to the problem with typebars. In order to overcome it, particularly as people became more adept at using his machine - Sholes decided to minimise the possibility of two neighbouring typebars being used in succession in a very clever way. He realised he had to take the most common letter pairs - TH, for example - and make sure their typebars were placed at safe distances from each other. He did this by using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by one Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes's chief financial backer. This did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced, and it allowed people to type more efficiently. So, today's computer keyboards are determined by the positioning of the mechanism inside a 19th-century typing machine.

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Q. Surely other more logical systems have been invented over the years

A. They have - quite a few were tried out between the 1870s and 1930s - though none have really caught on. Probably the most ergonomically designed is the Malt keyboard, named for its designer Lillian Malt. Malt dispensed with rows altogether, placing all the keys in an arc, with the most frequently used most conveniently placed.

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However, the most serious pretender to QWERTY's throne is the Dvorak system, and it has many fans. It was devised by a Washington State University professor, August Dvorak, who was funded by Carnegie Foundation money. His design was patented in 1932. Dvorak's home - the middle - row uses all five vowels and the five most common consonants: AOEUIDHTNS. With the vowels on one side and consonants on the other, a rhythm would be established as the typist's hands would tend to alternate. The effort of typing is thus much reduced by significantly redistributing the workload among the fingers. Dvorak keyboards allow the typist to write over 3,000 words without the fingers ever stretching. In comparison only about 50 words can be typed on a keyboard without reaching on QWERTY's home row. The home row letters on Dvorak do a total of 70 per cent of the work, whereas on QWERTY they do only 32 per cent.

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Q. How much better were these other designs

A. During the Second World War the US Navy conducted experiments and their findings suggested that the Dvorak layout increased typing productivity significantly.

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Q. And

A. We stick with QWERTY.

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Q. Why

A. Well, despite all the perceived advantages, in practice none of the others has actually proved themselves to be superior. Critics have suggested that the US Navy's trials were biased - Dvorak was involved in them - and another series of tests in the 1950s came up with somewhat more objective results. The upshot of it all is that a good, fast typist is good and fast whichever system is used. And QWERTY was there first, which is 99 per cent of the battle, because most people can't be bothered to retrain. It would just be too much fuss to try to replace the illogical but familiar set-up that we currently have.

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Q. So, we're stuck with it

A. Well, you can set your computer up to use the Dvorak keyboard settings, should you so wish. As for the future, it looks like the QWERTY layout is here to stay for another 128 years.

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'If it ain't broke...' as they say.

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See also the answerbank article on Andrew Carnegie

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith