Is there a specific reason why the inventor of the computer keyboard placed the letters as he or she did?

Question

why didnt s/he just place them alpahbetically?

Answer 1

When you type with two hands, and place your fingers on the "home row", you are in contact with the most used letters IN YOUR LANGUAGE. Other important letters and vowels are close to your strongest fingers, above and below this row.
The home row differs between English, French, Dutch, Spanish keyboards. And all the other "accent marks" can be found on keyboards that need them often.
You can change your windows system to make your English keyboard into 20 others from around the world.....ok?

Answer 2

Honey, the key board was invented WAYYY before the computer! LOL The original keyboard was for a typewriter.

The first models came out with the keys in alphabetical order, but the manual typewriters of the day had metal 'arms' that would swing out and hit an ink ribbon (and leaving the shape of the letter stamp on the paper behind it). The problem was that since allot of words used combination of letters that were so close together like: AB (cab) - HI (hill) - OP - ST (stop). The metal 'arms' would get stuck together and this would slow the typing speed and be a little messy (ink all over your fingers to un-stick the arms)

So a man (can remember his name right now...) invented the:
QWERTY keyboard. He rearranged the keys so that most of the problems that occurred due to close set arms would be avoided.

Once electric typewriters were invented, they tried to change the keyboard back to alphabetical again - only there were to many people who had learned how to type on the QWERTY version and it wasn't profitable to change.

I know that in the 70's they asked the world record holder for speed typing to learn how to type on an alphabetical keyboard and she blew her old record out of the water!!

I can't imagine why they don't change the keyboard back to alphabetical now??

Hope this answers your question!

Answer 3

Yes... the mention of references to typewriters is correct. The layout was designed specifically to slow down people typing, so the keys would not get tangled. The QWERTY convention is unfortunately really unconventional, but standard, and not just form the days of the computer... ;)

Alphabetically wouldn't really work either.... The most common keys are more or less centered around themselves where the less common letters are at the outside stretches of the keyboard.

For instance... See how many times you use, Q, P, Z... in relation to the keys on the homerow... Would it make sense to put them central if they're hardly ever used?

Answer 4

The type-bar system and the universal keyboard were the machine's novelty, but the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today's standard "QWERTY" keyboard.

PS try typing TYPEWRITER.

All top row

Answer 5

I think they just kept the standard typewriter key layout. And that was designed to make letters you used the most, out, from under your hands, the 'QWERTY' keyboard. Have a good day!

Answer 6

I have a 1950s Smith-Corona under my desk, its the same Layout as every PC I have ever owned. The Typewriter my mom bought and used in College, is now mine. It still works, I have been through 10 PCs.
But the keyboard is QWERTY, or TYPEWRITER, thats kinda universal since pre IBM.

Answer 7

It's modelled after typewriters.
It was supposed to be the optimal combination for fast typing, with those alphabets together which occur in combinations most. Here together does not refer to physical proximity, but the ease with which you can type with fingers of both hands.
Later on, with statistical analyses, it was found to be only sub-optimal arrangement. Other arrangements were deemed better for speed, but by that time, the QWERTY keyboard was already so popular as to be industry standard.

Answer 8

I heard that it was so that all fingers get a good work-out!

Also, in the olden days when the keyboard was on a typewriter, each time you pressed a key a big clunky bit of metal flipped up and against the paper. They could get tangled in each other fairly easily if you were typing fast, so the designers spread out the most commonly-used letters to reduce the chances of this happening.

Answer 9

The letters are placed exactly like they were on old-time typewriters. The letters used most frequently are in the middle.

Answer 10

because its harder to adjust to typing on an alphabetically arranged keyboard I would assume