Who first decided the placement of letters on a keyboard?

Question

and why did they choose QWERTYUIOP as the top line?

Answer 1

Christopher Sholes in 1867

Answer 2

I don't know where the arrangement comes from, but the placement of QWERTYUIOP along the top line is traditionally said to be derived from three constraints. These may all be myths for all I know, but lots of people believe in 'em:

1. The letters of the word TYPEWRITER are all on the top row. This is so that shop assistants could pick that word out easily as a demonstration. The other two letters in the row are O, Q and U.

2. Early typewriters had a clumsy mechanism in which the typebars could become entangled. The typebars that became entangled most readily were typebars from adjacent keys. Therefore letters that frequently occur together in English are placed on keys which are not adjacent. (I'm not sure about this one since T and H are close and this is the commonest digraph in English.)

3. Operating a typewriter took considerable strength and the least frequent letters were placed under the 4th and 5th fingers of the hands. (Again, I'm not sure about this because O and A are the second and third commonest letters in English)

Answer 3

Well, as far as I no, it was to SLOW typists down, because they were always jammin up the type bars in old typewriters.

The modern day answer is the Dvorak keyboard, which is much easier to use, easier on the fingers, much less carpel tunnel syndrome, and which is on YOUR computer right now! :)

You can look at where the letters are by searchin for Dvorak info on Google, and the Dvorak keyboard driver is on every computer right now! I have been considerin switchin for some time now! Maybe I'll finally DO it now! :D

It has been said that typing classes for people that did not know anything about typin went MUCH better teachin Dvorak right from the start, rather than switchin to Dvorak from QWERTY.

I hope that helps! ~Cindy! :)

Answer 4

Not sure who it was without looking it up, but I do remember being told by my typing teacher that the system was devised to slow down typists, as the original machines could not take the speeds!

Answer 5

oh damn, i cant remember this and i had to learn it all when i was doing my computer tecnician a+ course. I think its something to do with the inventor of the keyboard............ qwert???? i do some homework on this one.

Answer 6

A RIGHT handed person...

Answer 7

Christopher Latham Sholes(1819-1890)
Sholes was a U.S. mechanical engineer who invented the first practical modern typewriter, patented in 1868. Sholes invented the typewriter with partners S. W. Soule and G. Glidden, that was manufactured (by Remington Arms Company) in 1873. He was born February 14, 1819 in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, and died on February 17, 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Before the computer, the typewriter may have been the most significant everyday business tool. Christopher Latham Sholes and his colleagues, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé, invented the first practical typewriting machine in 1866. Five years, dozens of experiments, and two patents later, Sholes and his associates produced an improved model similar to today's typewriters.

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.

Sholes lacked the patience required to market the new product and sold the rights to Densmore. He, in turn, convinced Philo Remington (of rifle fame) to market the device. The first "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer" was offered for sale in 1874 but was not an instant success. A few years later, improvements made by Remington engineers gave the machine its market appeal and sales skyrocketed.

Early Typewriter History
The first practical typewriter was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, and was marketed by the Remington Arms company in 1873.

Early Office Museum - Typewriters
Large features, many photos, and several pages add up to a highly recommended site on typewriters.

The First Typewriter
It was called the "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer," and it was produced by the gunmakers E. Remington & Sons in Ilion, NY from 1874-1878.

A Brief History of Typewriters
Illustrated highlights, typewriter patents date back to 1713.

The First Commercial Typewriter
The first practical typewriter was conceived by three American inventors and friends in 1867: Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samual W. Soule.

The First American Typewriter Patent
The first American patent for a typewriter was granted in 1829 to William Austin Burt from Detroit.

The First English Typewriter Patent
In 1714, by the grace of Queen Anne, a patent was granted to the English engineer Henry Mill.

The Typewriter
The invention of at least 112 such machines preceded the successful Remington typewriter.

Trivia

George K. Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee patented the typewriter ribbon on 9/14/1886.
The first electric typewriter was the Blickensderfer.
In 1944, IBM designs the first typewriter with proportional spacing.
Pellegrine Tarri made the first typewriter proven to work in 1801 and invented carbon paper in 1808.
In 1829, William Austin Burt invents the typographer, a predecessor to the typewriter.
Mark Twain enjoyed and made use of new inventions, he was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.




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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%.
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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.
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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.
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