We use keyboard every day, be it
our desktop, or laptop, or tablet or smartphone. But have you ever wondered as
to why the keyboard is not arranged in alphabetical order?
The reason goes back to the time
of manual typewriters. These typewriters in earlier days did have the keys
arranged in alphabetical order. However, it was later discovered that the
people typed so fast that the mechanical character keys got jammed very easily
with this arrangement.
To prevent this, the keys were
randomly positioned so that the weaker fingers were needed more frequently. This
meant that people typed at a speed which the machine could handle. As a result,
the ‘QWERTY’ keyboard came into existence that we find and use today.
The QWERTY keyboard layout was
devised and created in the 1860s by the creator of the first modern typewriter,
Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee. Originally, the
characters on the typewriters he invented were arranged alphabetically, set on
the end of a metal bar which struck the paper when its key was pressed. However,
once an operator had learned to type at speed, the bars attached to letters
that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another, compelling
the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also regularly blotting the
document. A business associate of Sholes, James Densmore, suggested splitting
up keys for letters commonly used together to speed up typing by preventing
common pairs of typebars from striking the platen at the same time and sticking
together.
There are varied opinions on this
rearrangement of letters in the keyboard. The logic of the QWERTY layout was
based on letter usage in English rather than positioning of letter in the
alphabet. However, some sources assert that the QWERTY layout was designed to
slow down typing speed to further reduce jamming. Also, the QWERTY keyboards
were made so one could type using keys from the top row of the keyboard. On the
other hand, there are sources who assert the rearrangement worked by separating
common sequences of letters in English. Apparently, the hammers that were
likely to be used in quick succession were less likely to hinder with each
other. This random arrangement eventually became standard in computers later
followed by the devices made after that.
SOURCE : TECHWORM
