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Speaker 1: Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com where smart Happens.
Speaker 1: Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, why are the
Speaker 1: keys arranged the way they are on a quirty keyboard?
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy four, Remington and Sons manufactured the first
Speaker 1: commercial typewriter, called the Remington Number one. This typewriter was
Speaker 1: designed by Christopher Scholz and used the quirty keyboard we
Speaker 1: are all familiar with. This early typewriter used a mechanism
Speaker 1: with characters on the end of a bar. When a
Speaker 1: key was struck, a link would swing the bar into
Speaker 1: a tape coated with ink. When the character struck the tape,
Speaker 1: the impression of the character was transferred onto the paper,
Speaker 1: which was positioned behind the tape. Shul's original prototypes had
Speaker 1: a problem with the bars colliding with each other and jamming,
Speaker 1: so the story goes that he arranged the keys with
Speaker 1: the most common letters in hard to reach spots to
Speaker 1: slow type is down and try to avoid this problem.
Speaker 1: It might seem odd that the keyboard layout that we're
Speaker 1: using today, over a hundred years later, would be originally
Speaker 1: designed for inefficiency, but nonetheless that seems to be the case.
Speaker 1: Whatever the reason for the quarty layout, it seems pretty
Speaker 1: unlikely that one of the first keyboard layouts invented would
Speaker 1: be perfect, no matter what it looked like. The Corty
Speaker 1: keyboard is therefore very different from the divorat keyboard, which
Speaker 1: is trying to be super efficient. The divorat keyboard layout
Speaker 1: tries to minimize the distance traveled by the fingers. It
Speaker 1: also tries to make the typeest alternate hands on consecutive
Speaker 1: letters as often as possible. The divorc lagout places all
Speaker 1: of the most commonly used letters in the home rows
Speaker 1: so that your fingers don't have to move at all
Speaker 1: to hit these keys. The left hand has all the
Speaker 1: vowels and some consonants, and the right hand has only consonants,
Speaker 1: so there are very few words in the English language
Speaker 1: that can be typed with only one hand on the
Speaker 1: divorate keyboard. To our papaya and opaque. Both Pumpkin and
Speaker 1: minimum can be typed with one hand on a Quarty keyboard.
Speaker 1: Give it a try. You can find websites that show
Speaker 1: the layout of the divorate keyboard and measure finger distances.
Speaker 1: For example, if I had typed this article on a
Speaker 1: divorate keyboard, my fingers would have traveled about thirty meters
Speaker 1: versus the fifty four meters they traveled on a Quarty
Speaker 1: key board that I used when I type this. Some argue, however,
Speaker 1: that the divorat keyboard is no more efficient than a
Speaker 1: Quarty keyboard. An independent study in nineteen fifty six showed
Speaker 1: that Quarty type is and Divorac type has had about
Speaker 1: the same rate of speed, and continued studies since then
Speaker 1: don't show a clear winner between the two. This may
Speaker 1: explain why Corty is still the standard. If you want
Speaker 1: to see for yourself, you can switch your keyboard to
Speaker 1: a divorc configuration just by changing a setting on your
Speaker 1: computer's operating system. Depending on your keyboard, you may even
Speaker 1: be able to pry off the keys and rearrange them
Speaker 1: into the Divorac layout. Give it a try sometimes. Do
Speaker 1: you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If
Speaker 1: so please send me an email at podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the brain stuff block
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