Why Keys on Keyboard are not in order ?

Logic behind the reason

Initially in 1860s, the characters on the typewriters were arranged in alphabetical order. At that time a typewriter use to work using a set on the end of a metal bar which strikes the paper when its key was pressed. However, this procedure was not at all compatible to type faster. Still an operator had learned to type at speed by facing lot complications. Letters that placed close together on the keyboard became tangled with one another, forcing the typist to manually unstick the type bars. This also caused staining the document frequently and jams in typewriter machine. A business associate suggested using nice trick by splitting most commonly keys to speed up typing, so that they also don’t get tangled very often. Rearrangement of keys introduced the word QWERTY, the most commonly used modern-day keyboard layout.




QWERTY keyboard layout

QWERTY is designed for English language. By all means the purpose was to rearrange the keys that were expected to be used in quick sequence were less expected to hold up with each other. The top row was planned to have all the letters for the word ‘typewriter’ hence a typist can easily type the most common words like ‘typewriter’ more quickly.

QWERTY was designed after spending a lot of time on research allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes a key. Thousands of English words can be spelled using only the left hand and right hand separately. And therefore an unfortunate consequence of the layout goes to right-handed typists because more English words can be spelled using only the left hand. QWERTY layout is helpful for those who use their right hand primarily for the mouse leaving the left hand type.

Arrangement of keys under QWERTY layout may not sound completely sensible to many of us today as we are now many decades ahead to that time.

Team Dt

Posted in: Tech News