Re: ))))Vu & Company(((( THE HISTORY OF OUR KEYBOARD

nice

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 9:51 AM, Jhuley Lal <jhulaylall@gmail.com> wrote:

The History Of QWERTY Keyboard

 

Why is the keyboard layout Q-W-E-R-T-Y and not simply A-B-C-D-F?   

Why were computer keyboards designed in the current format not in 

a alphabetical order. Is there any specific reason or it's just some random 

convention we are following?

 

It hasn't been done randomly or just for fun, 

it has a very distinct and purposeful reason behind it.

 

The current format of the keyboard was devised long back in

 1870's by a gentleman named Christopher Sholes for the

 then typewriter. Though, it definitely was not the first format

 to come up, it didn't take much time to switch to this one.

 Starting with lexicographic order I.e. A-B-C-D-E-F, after 

various trials and errors and taking hundreds of cases, 

Christopher Sholes gradually reached the Q-W-E-R-T-Y.

 It was really well received (evident from the fact that we still use it).

 

When the typewriter was invented, it used a metal bar to

 hold the character alphabets and the other end of the bar 

was attached to a linkage carrying a carriage with the

 coated ink. When a key was struck, it would emboss its

 character on the paper placed beneath the carriage. 

However, when an operator learned to type at a great speed,

 a certain flaw was noticed. When two letters were struck

 in quick succession, the bars of the typewriter would 

entangle and get jammed.

 

Christopher Sholes found a way out. 

He proposed that the letters of frequently used letter

 pairs should be in different rows. For example, 

'C-H', 'S-T', 'T-H', 'W-H' and more. 

He also formulated that to speed up the typing process, 

there has to be a regular alternation between two hands. 

So observing thousands of words, he placed the letters

 in way that most words would make use of both hands.

 

He also observed that almost every word in the dictionary 

carries a vowel. According to him, the most frequently used 

vowel was 'A' and the most frequently used letter (non-vowel) 

was 'S'. So he placed 'A' and 'S' together and chose to keep

 less common letters like 'Q', 'W', 'Z', 'X', 'C' around these. 

This was complemented by placing fairly common letters like

 'M', 'N', 'L', 'K', 'O', 'P' at right extremes to create a perfect 

alternation between both the hands.

 

All these factors tested with thousands of trials gave us 

the format that we still use and perhaps would be using till eternity.

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