Why are keys on a keyboard arranged that way?

Question

Always wondered. It goes 'QWERTY...' I know typewriter keys were arranged in this fashion, too, but does anyone know how that got started, and so forth?

Answer 1

I heard in a computer class about 10 years ago that the keys are arranged based on the amount an average person uses them. For example, the less common letters like Z and X are placed at the bottom for your left hand pinky to reach because they are used less. .... but then you would think that this genius would have put letters like A and E on the right hand side in the main row.

Answer 2

The 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriters established the QWERTY layout for the letter keys. During the period in which Sholes and his colleagues were experimenting with this invention, other keyboard arrangements were apparently tried, but these are poorly documented. The tantalizing near-alphabetical sequence on the "home row" of the QWERTY layout (d-f-g-h-j-k-l) demonstrates that a straightforward alphabetical arrangement was the original starting point . The QWERTY layout of keys has become the de facto standard for English-language typewriter and computer keyboards. Other languages written in the Latin alphabet sometimes use variants of the QWERTY layouts, such as the French AZERTY, the Italian QZERTY, and the German QWERTZ layouts.

The QWERTY layout is certainly far from the most efficient, since it requires a touch-typist to move his or her fingers between rows to type the most common letters. A popular story suggests that it was used for early typewriters because it was inefficient; it slowed a typist down so as to reduce the frequency of the typewriter's typebars' wedging together and jamming the machine. Another story is that the QWERTY layout allowed early typewriter salesmen to impress their customers by being able to easily type out the example word "typewriter" without having learnt the full keyboard layout, because "typewriter" can be spelled purely on the top row of the keyboard. The most likely explanation is that the QWERTY arrangement was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther away from each other inside the machine . This allowed the user to actually type faster without jamming. Unfortunately, no definitive explanation for the QWERTY keyboard has been found, and typewriter aficionados continue to debate the issue.

A number of radically different layouts, such as the Dvorak keyboard, have been proposed to reduce the perceived inefficiencies of QWERTY, but these have not been able to displace the QWERTY layout; their proponents claim considerable advantages, but so far none has been widely used. The Blickensderfer typewriter with its DHIATENSOR layout may have possibly been the first attempt at optimizing the keyboard layout for efficiency advantages.

Many old typewriters do not contain a separate key for the numeral 1, and some even older ones also lack the numeral zero. Typists learned the habit of using the lowercase letter l for the digit 1, and the uppercase O for the zero. Some still carry the habit of using the letter l instead of the numeral 1 with them when typing on a computer, sometimes leading to errors, especially when working with numerical data.

Answer 3

"The 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriters established the QWERTY layout for the letter keys that is used nowadays in Anglophone countries for virtually all computer keyboards and the majority of other keyboards. Other nations using the Latin alphabet may use variants of the QWERTY layout, for example the French AZERTY layout.

It is generally acknowledged that the QWERTY design was concerned with trying to minimize jamming of the keys. How this was accomplished is a matter of some dispute. It is easy to find claims that QWERTY was intentionally designed to slow typing down so as to minimize jamming, although there does not appear to be any hard evidence to support this claim. There were many other typewriter designs competing with QWERTY during the latter part of the nineteenth century although QWERTY eventually came to dominate the market. News reports of typing contests during that period indicate that QWERTY did quite well.

Radically different layouts such as the Dvorak keyboard have been marketed for many decades but have not been able to replace the QWERTY layout, despite the advantages claimed by their proponents. The Dvorak layout placed the frequently used letters in the home row in order to minimize movement of the fingers while typing most words. There is little dispute of this fact, although there is a great deal of dispute about whether finger movement actually increases typing speeds [See QWERTY]. However, many say the Dvorak keyboard improves typing accuracy and comfort over the QWERTY keyboard.

Many non-Latin alphabets have keyboard layouts that have nothing to do with QWERTY. The Russian layout, for instance, puts the common trigrams ыва, про, and ить on adjacent keys so that they can be typed by rolling the fingers. The Greek layout, on the other hand, is a variant of QWERTY."

Answer 4

The keys used most frequently are closest as you hold your hands over center of board.

Answer 5

as much as i use the computer i have never really wondered about it. Interesting!

Answer 6

It was made by a dyslexic.