I had never heard of it before now. Here is an interesting fact though; the qwerty layout was invented to SLOW DOWN typing. They tried to space the vowels to prevent quick typing because that leads to mistakes, which cost much more time in the long-run, back in the days of typewriters. In the modern age it seems more convenient to switch, but the whole population will never retrain while some people are only just getting to grips with the qwerty!
You're almost right there, dom180. It was definitely to slow us down because each typewriter key was linked to a swinging arm with a hammer on the end which imprinted the letter on the paper. They were arranged in a sort of semi-circle like an orchestra. If two were seated close, they would get tangled as one hit and returned and the next one went up to hit and you then had to untangle them with your fingers. I don't think there's anyone old enough here to remember that but it happened all the time. I used to be in a typing pool. This was my life.
It slowed down your typing speed. We had to work out how long to delay. It seemed to us that the man who designed the order of the letters did it almost randomly and if he'd done it according to which letters don't follow each other in our language (a 'k' rarely follows an 'x'), we'd have all been quicker because we wouldn't have had to wait a certain length of time on some words (especially "the". Look how close the letters are on your keyboard).
I don't want to insult men but women would have designed the layout more practically. It's commendable to put Q and W together, but three vowels were next to each other on the top row as I remember. And g and h were together. It made us think men were stupid and it made us angry because we had to follow this stupid layout and we had no say.
We don't want to think men are stupid. Just let men make decisions men are good at making and leave the rest of it to us.
Indeed the "QWERTY" was designed to prevent fast typing and mainly jams. The most common letters are placed in such a way so as not to be right next to each other, because on typewriters hitting two keys that were right next to each other would cause a jam.
People are too comfortable with the "QWERTY" layout. That's why they won't switch, they don't want to be inconvenienced by having to re-learn how to type on a keyboard layout they are not familiar with. Not because some are just getting accustomed to the "QWERTY" layout. The "QWERTY" layout has been around for quite some time, if someone wasn't used to it by now it's either because they are really young and thus are just learning a keyboard, they just aren't very good with computers, or they use a language other than English which also requires a different keyboard... There are variances of the Dvorak design for alternate languages though, which practice the same concepts.
I am sure this has been the subject of some debate by officials, but for me, I don't think it's fair that kids are forced to learn an inferior keyboard layout in public education systems. Why not teach them in the Dvorak layout? Sure it could be argued that they would be at a disadvantage because about 99% of current computers use "QWERTY," but really that's just an excuse. "QWERTY" could be phased out just like any other thing that is obsolete or inferior.
The Dvorak design should be mandated as the standard for modern keyboards. Maybe the first generation of kids would need to be "multilingual" in their keyboard knowledge (if that even just made sense?), but as the old layout was phased out, the newer generations would only be required to learn the Dvorak.
What do you think of the Dvorak keyboard layout?
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I had never heard of it before now. Here is an interesting fact though; the qwerty layout was invented to SLOW DOWN typing. They tried to space the vowels to prevent quick typing because that leads to mistakes, which cost much more time in the long-run, back in the days of typewriters. In the modern age it seems more convenient to switch, but the whole population will never retrain while some people are only just getting to grips with the qwerty!
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You're almost right there, dom180. It was definitely to slow us down because each typewriter key was linked to a swinging arm with a hammer on the end which imprinted the letter on the paper. They were arranged in a sort of semi-circle like an orchestra. If two were seated close, they would get tangled as one hit and returned and the next one went up to hit and you then had to untangle them with your fingers. I don't think there's anyone old enough here to remember that but it happened all the time. I used to be in a typing pool. This was my life.
It slowed down your typing speed. We had to work out how long to delay. It seemed to us that the man who designed the order of the letters did it almost randomly and if he'd done it according to which letters don't follow each other in our language (a 'k' rarely follows an 'x'), we'd have all been quicker because we wouldn't have had to wait a certain length of time on some words (especially "the". Look how close the letters are on your keyboard).
I don't want to insult men but women would have designed the layout more practically. It's commendable to put Q and W together, but three vowels were next to each other on the top row as I remember. And g and h were together. It made us think men were stupid and it made us angry because we had to follow this stupid layout and we had no say.
We don't want to think men are stupid. Just let men make decisions men are good at making and leave the rest of it to us.
I'm glad to have informed you :)
Indeed the "QWERTY" was designed to prevent fast typing and mainly jams. The most common letters are placed in such a way so as not to be right next to each other, because on typewriters hitting two keys that were right next to each other would cause a jam.
People are too comfortable with the "QWERTY" layout. That's why they won't switch, they don't want to be inconvenienced by having to re-learn how to type on a keyboard layout they are not familiar with. Not because some are just getting accustomed to the "QWERTY" layout. The "QWERTY" layout has been around for quite some time, if someone wasn't used to it by now it's either because they are really young and thus are just learning a keyboard, they just aren't very good with computers, or they use a language other than English which also requires a different keyboard... There are variances of the Dvorak design for alternate languages though, which practice the same concepts.
I am sure this has been the subject of some debate by officials, but for me, I don't think it's fair that kids are forced to learn an inferior keyboard layout in public education systems. Why not teach them in the Dvorak layout? Sure it could be argued that they would be at a disadvantage because about 99% of current computers use "QWERTY," but really that's just an excuse. "QWERTY" could be phased out just like any other thing that is obsolete or inferior.
The Dvorak design should be mandated as the standard for modern keyboards. Maybe the first generation of kids would need to be "multilingual" in their keyboard knowledge (if that even just made sense?), but as the old layout was phased out, the newer generations would only be required to learn the Dvorak.