why is the computer keyboard layout as it is ?

Answer 1

It followed the layout of the typewriters. The letters on the typewriter were arranged by usage and to make it easy for the typist to reach.

Answer 2

It has a lot to do with the old typewriters. The keys on the old typewriters used to go straight from their location to an arm that sat in a well holding the stamp that represented that letter. The problem was that if you typed too fast, often times the arms of the keys would connect with each other and "stick" which meant you had to reach in there and unstick them then go back to typing. So, Sholes & Glidden among others, came up with the now commonly referred to QWERTY keyboard layout. The popular belief is that the layout was designed so that keys that are often used together are separated by some physical space on the keyboard. The fact that the home rows of keys is semi-alphabetical just shows that they did start with an alphabetical layout and then went from there.

Answer 3

The QWERTY keyboard layout was devised in the 1860s by Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee, who was also the creator of the first modern typewriter. 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, forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also frequently blotting the document.[1] Sholes decided that the best way out of the difficulty was to find out which letters were most used in the English language, and then to re-site them on the keyboard as far from each other as possible. This had the effect of reducing the speed, and, by doing so, lessened the chance of clashing type bars. In this way was born the QWERTY keyboard, named after the first six letters on the top line.

Answer 4

In 1867, Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee printer, filed a patent application for a mechanical writing machine. Unlike the manual typewriters you may remember from your youth, his machine had its typebars on the bottom, striking upward to leave an impression on the paper. This arrangement had two serious drawbacks. First, because the printing point was underneath the paper carriage, it was invisible to the typist. Second, if a typebar became jammed, it too, remained invisible to the operator. Sholes worked for the next six years to try to eliminate this problem, trying mechanical changes and different keyboard arrangements.

In 1873, E. Remington & Sons licensed the design from Scholes, and set their engineers to work to on the design. One of their keyboard layout changes was driven by a clever marketing idea. The Remington brand name, TYPE WRITER, could be most speedily typed if all of its letters were on the same row. Remington's salesmen used this slight bit of subterfuge to impress potential customers.

Competing designs continued to be introduced over the next six decades that solved the mechanical jamming problem, and enabled faster typing. These designs ranged from the so-called "Ideal" keyboard, which placed the most commonly used letters of the alphabet -- DHIATENSOR -- in the home row (circa 1880), to the more well-known Dvorak keyboard, patented in 1932.

How much better were these other designs? During the second World War, the US Navy conducted experiments and discovered that the Dvorak layout increased typing productivity so significantly, that the payback time to retrain a group of typists was only ten days! But these designs were never successful in the marketplace.

Why would firms consistently buy an inferior product? The answer lies not in the device, but in the context of how the devices were employed. Typewriters by themselves, are unproductive objects. Their productive employment requires the presence of a skilled operator - the typist. In the late 1880's, the practice of "touch typing" (where you don't cheat and look at your fingers) was developed. And it was developed for the Remington keyboard. So while competing typewriter designers were heralding their advantages to potential typewriter purchasers, the typists were learning how to use the Remington QWERTY keyboard.

Answer 5

The alphanumeric key layout on the keyboard is based upon the old manual typewriter layout. Ironically, that layout was designed in order to slow down typing speed to keep the strike levers from jamming each other. It has carried forward because of familiarity, not functionality. The layout of the function keys, numeric keys, and special keys evolved from the IBM keyboard layouts.

Answer 6

I was told that IN THE BEGINNING typists typed so fast with the standard and logical abc layout that they kept on breaking the keys on manual typewriters. They designed the qwerty keyboard to slow them down. I hope I'm not passing on an urban legend but it sounds good anyway.

Regards EDD

Answer 7

with old typewriters, the "fingers" that wrote the letters would get jammed. They developed this keyboard configuration as a way to slow down typing. All the vowels and commonly used letters are spread out in order to slow down typing. Once computers became common, the keyboard never got switched to a more logical configuration.

Answer 8

computer keyboards are designed after typewriter keyboards
Typewriter keyboards were desinged in the manner they was so that the keys you use the most would not be next to each other
keys that are close to each other struck at the same time on a standard typewriter would jam in place

Answer 9

well the first keyboard was for a typewriter and it wasnt layed out like the ones today. It was a more efficiant type that put the keys most used nearest your index fingers. But typers were typing to fast and the keys sticked together to much so the made a less efficiant one and thats the one we use today. Pretty wierd if you ask me.

Answer 10

Cause the original layout made it hard for the people who worked with the typing to be slow and trype without errors, so they came up with the QWERTY system. I read that somewhere......