why the letters on keyboards are in that order.?

Question

i mean, why q, w, e, r, t, y, and so on. why not a, b, c,...

thanks :)

Answer 1

Hello:

Its call a "qwerty" keyboard. Here is information taken from the following website. If I could have thought of a better way to say it I would have, but I felt they answered it just fine.

http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html

Consider QWERTY...
...the typewriter keyboard...

...the Universal User Interface....
It makes no sense. It is awkward, inefficient and confusing. We've been saying that for 124 years. But there it remains. Those keys made their first appearance on a rickety, clumsy device marketed as the "Type-Writer" in 1872. Today the keyboard is a universal fixture even on the most advanced, sophisticated computers and word processors electronic technology can produce.
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How could we get stuck with something so bad?
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In this case, the answer lies in the old proverb about the early bird catching the worm. As far as the typewriter keyboard is concerned, being first was the whole ball game.

1878 Typewriter Patent Drawing, featuring the QWERTY Keyboard. Years after its introduction, it was considered important enough to include in a patent.

The name "QWERTY" for our typewriter keyboard comes from the first six letters in the top alphabet row (the one just below the numbers). It is also called the "Universal" keyboard for rather obvious reasons. It was the work of inventor C. L. Sholes, who put together the prototypes of the first commercial typewriter in a Milwaukee machine shop back in the 1860's.

For years, popular writers have accused Sholes of deliberately arranging his keyboard to slow down fast typists who would otherwise jam up his sluggish machine. In fact, his motives were just the opposite.

When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. At the time, Milwaukee was a backwoods town. The crude machine shop tools available there could hardly produce a finely-honed instrument that worked with precision. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. Looking inside his early machine, we can see how he did it.

The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called "typebars." The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances.

He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced.

The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Sholes' patent granted in 1878 (see drawing), some years after the machine was into production. QWERTY's effect, by reducing those annoying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down.

Sholes and Densmore went to Remington, the arms manufacturer, to have their machines mass-produced. In 1874, the first Type-Writer appeared on the market. No contemporary account complains about the illogical keyboard. In fact, few contemporary accounts even mention the machine at all. At its debut, it was largely ignored.

Sales of the typewriter did not take off until after Remington's second model was introduced in 1878, offering the only major modification to the keyboard as we know it today.

The first machines typed only capital letters. The new Remington No. 2 offered both upper and lower case by adding the familiar shift key. It is called a shift because it actually caused the carriage to shift in position for printing either of two letters on each typebar. Modern electronic machines no longer shift mechanically when the shift key is pressed, but its name remains the same.

In the decades following the original Remington, many alternative keyboards came and went. Then, in 1932, with funds from the Carnegie Foundation, Professor August Dvorak, of Washington State University, set out to develop the ultimate typewriter keyboard once and for all.

Dvorak went beyond Blickensderfer in arranging his letters according to frequency. Dvorak's home row uses all five vowels and the five most common consonants: AOEUIDHTNS. With the vowels on one side and consonants on the other, a rough typing rhythm would be established as each hand would tend to alternate.

With the Dvorak keyboard, a typist can type about 400 of the English language's most common words without ever leaving the home row. The comparable figure on QWERTY is 100. The home row letters on Dvorak do a total of 70% of the work. On QWERTY they do only 32%.

The Dvorak keyboard sounds very good. However, a keyboard need to do more than just "sound" good, and unfortunately, Dvorak has failed to prove itself superior to QWERTY. It appears that many of the studies used to test the effectiveness of Dvorak were flawed. Many were conducted by the good professor himself, creating a conflict of interest question, since he had a financial interest in the venture. A U.S. General Services Administration study of 1953 appears to have been more objective. It found that it really didn't matter what keyboard you used. Good typists type fast, bad typists don't.

It's not surprising, then, that Dvorak has failed to take hold. No one wants to take the time and trouble to learn a new keyboard, especially if it isn't convincingly superior to the old. A few computer programs and special-order daisy wheels are available to transform modern typewriters or word processors to the Dvorak keyboard, but the demand for these products is small. After all, expert typists can can do nearly 100 words a minute with QWERTY . Word processors increase that speed significantly. The gains that Dvorak claims to offer aren't really needed.

Answer 2

I found out approximately this in psychology final 12 months. Well, the laptop keyboard originates from the typewriter key hooked up. And the cause QWERTY is at the best line is since whilst the typewriter salesman could exhibit the typewriter to a buyer he'd variety "typewriter" in order that they placed the entire letters to spell typewriter at the best line. And that is why! But, the QWERTY keyboard is not essentially the most effective and great method to prepare the keys, its form of awkward and clumsy. So this man Dvorak invented his possess keyboard association that's believe to be greater. But, it isn't like every body used to be inclined to difference upon getting used to QWERTY.

Answer 3

Originally, keyboards were set up so the most-used letters were struck by the strongest fingers, and least-used were off on the edges. Unfortunately, old typewriters got jammed easily if you typed too fast, so they rearranged the keys to slow down typists and prevent jamming. (ironic true story!)

There is an alternative keyboard called the Dvorak that uses the most-used letters on strongest fingers system, but everybody learns the common QWERTY system (that's what it's called), and it's tough to learn a new one. I don't know if you can get an ABC keyboard.

Answer 4

This goes back to the old days of type writers. The letters used to be organized according to the alphabet on those early machines. However, people who used them became so efficient and fast in typing that type bars would become tangled every so often in the process of typing. Therefore, the letters on the keyboard (I think it was referred to as key top) had to be scrambled, or moved around to slow down the typing process, so the typewriter would not keep breaking. :) .

Answer 5

They are grouped so the most commonly used letters are the ones that are easily reached. How often do you type the letter q, so that is on the right side pinkie finger. Yet the letter T is used quite frequently, so that is right at your best finger tip.

Answer 6

Because it all started with the typewriter key set.
It is said
Habits die hard.

Which manufactures can afford to take risk by changing the keyboard

Answer 7

I guess cause way back then when the typewriter was invented the letters were put in that order..since then they were left like that....but this is a very interesting question,,this is only my assumption..

Answer 8

The most used letters are placed in the center of the keyboard to be easily accessed by your stronger fingers.

Answer 9

well at the very beginning, they used to be like a, b, c, d. This was when the typewriter first came out. People started to type SO FAST that the keys kept getting stuck. So to slow down people's rate of typing, someone mixed up all the keys so that they would not get stuck.

Answer 10

because the format the keyboard is currently is more user friendly proper keyboarding has the keys most used in the language in the middle for easier/faster access