derek gulbranson

QWERTY Keyboard Designed To Be Inefficient

The typewriter keyboard was originally laid out alphabetically but, because the original typewriter was so crappy, the keys would stick if you typed too fast. Their solution was to put lots of effort in to rearranging the keys so that letters used together were farther apart, causing you to type slower. They succeeded when people typed so slow they keys didn't jam anymore. This is how we ended up with the keyboard layout we all use today. Huh. Who knew.

Not sure if I'm adventurous enough to try "the alternative":http://dvzine.org/zine/cover.html, but it is an interesting read. Pind is "trying it out":http://www.pinds.com/blog/one-entry?entry%5fid=40148. Maybe someday we'll look back and laugh at how silly our keyboards were.