Who and what went into to the process of creating where the keys were placed on the keyboard?
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The Non-sensical QWERTY Key Arrangement\nWhen initially introduced, the typewriters were utilized by typing with only two fingers. The development of 10 finger typing is attributed to a Mrs. L. V. Longley in 1878. This was followed shortly afterwards by the concept of "touch typing" attributed to Frank E. McGurrin, a federal court clerk in Salt Lake City, whereby typists would type without looking at the keys, having memorized their locations.\n\nThese new techniques, and some famous typing competitions, demonstrated the worth of the new machine and led to greater acceptance. However, proficient typists easily caused the typewriter mechanisms to jam. \n\nTo address this, Christopher Sholes (one of the original inventors of the typewriter) had an ingenious idea. He discovered that many English words contained combinations of letters next to each other in the alphabet, for instance ABBey, DEFEct, HIGh, etc., which occurred frequently. With the help of a teacher called Amos Desmore, Sholes determined the combinations that occurred most frequently, split them and placed the component letters far away on the keyboard of his machine. And this is how the QWERTY layout was born. (The layout is referred to as “QWERTY” because of the arrangement of the keys in the upper row).\n\nAs a result of this rearrangement, the keys that were used most frequently were not as easily accessible to the typist. Thus, the QWERTY layout effectively reduced the speed at which human users could type, thereby preventing their jamming the mechanism too often. \n\nThe Dvorak Layout\nThe non-sensical QWERTY layout caused many different layouts to be invented. The most notable one is named Dvorak after its inventor, August Dvorak, an early ergonomics researcher at the University of Washington. In 1936, Dvorak analyzed the English language to determine which letters were most frequently used. He then rearranged the keyboard layout so that these keys were positioned on the home row, that is, the row under the fingers of a typist in the rest position. By grouping the keys so that the most used keys were closest to the typist's fingers, reach was minimized and typing speed was increased. \n\nThe introduction of the Dvorak layout, despite its efficiency, was not successful because the QWERTY layout had become a defacto standard and no typewriter manufacturer wished to introduce a product that would require its users to have to retrain the manner in which they worked. \n\nThe Advent of the Personal Computer\nPerhaps the most attention paid to the keyboard as a human interface was by IBM in 1984, and was in regard to the compatibility of the layout of the Personal Computer that it had just developed with the layout of the Selectric™ typewriter. The Personal Computer had no jamming problems and its keyboard could handle even the fastest typist. Therefore the issue of separating the keys did not pose itself.\n\nMoreover, no attention seems to have been paid by IBM to the fact that the newly developed Personal Computer, was going to be used primarily by people with little or no typing skills and to whom therefore the issue of the "QWERTY legacy" was unimportant. \n\nBecause of this, IBM could have redesigned the layout of the Personal Computer keyboard to a more ergonomic and user friendly layout. Unfortunately, IBM missed this wonderful opportunity and so it is that a keyboard layout designed over a century ago, for a different technological situation, is in use on over 500 million computers today.\n\n[Thanks for asking this question! It's fun to read the history again.  I remember my grandmother had one of those old typewriters with arms for each letter to strike the page. You could really jam those up if you went too fast. Too bad IBM missed the opportunity to change the layout.]
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Believe it or not:  They were designed for INEFFICIENCY!\n\nYep, that's right!  Back in "the old days," the machinery that made up the typewriters couldn't type as quickly as people could press the buttons that operated the machinery.  So they darned things would get all locked up on themselves.\n\nSo "they" redesigned the keyboards so that the most commonly-used letters would be typed by the weakest fingers, and the whole process of typing something out would be very slightly slowed-down--just enough so that the typewriter keys would stop tripping-up and/or locking-up on themselves.\n\n(I heard this in typing class way back in the Dinosaur Days, when I was in 8th grade.  I also read the same thing, elsewhere, somewhere in print, in the days before Al Gore thought up the Internet. [That last bit was a joke.])
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I'm not sure where this question is going.  Is it about conducting a study about aspects of a secretary or administrative assistant?\n\nHow about designing a more ergonomic keyboard.  The original keyboards were designed to SLOW down the typing speed.  This was because the early mechanical keyboards could not keep up with the skill of the users.\n\nNow that almost all keyboards are electronic, there should be a better arrangement.  For example, move the 'e', 'r' and 't' to the home row.  Move the 'j', 'k' and 'l' keys upper row.
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The keyboard long predates the PC. Our modern keyboard design—known as QWERTY for its first row of letter keys—was designed in 1868 by printer Christopher Sholes for use on manual typewriters. Sholes needed to find a way to slow typists down and keep them from hitting the keys too fast, which could jam the machine. So he took the most commonly used letters, banished them to the edges of the keyboard and placed common letter combinations far away from each other. The result: A keyboard that was intentionally inefficient.\n\nYears passed, and the need to slow typists down disappeared. Eventually, we started using computers, which have no practical speed limit at all. But the inefficient keyboard layout persisted, out of custom and habit. As a result—nearly 140 years after Sholes created his keyboard layout—modern computer users are stuck with an obsolete design that not only slows us down, but also can cause crippling hand injuries.\n\nYet we still use it. Countless alternative keyboard designs have been proposed through the years—August Dvorak's eponymous layout is the most famous—but none have stuck. There's just not enough momentum to switch, and any keyboard maker that manufactured a different layout would likely get burned. So it seems we're stuck with QWERTY.\nhttp://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/04/15/blank-slate-introduction_cx_de_06slate_0418blankintro.html\n\nWe've been using the Qwerty keyboard since the 1870s, when typewriter inventor C.L. Sholes moved letters around the keyboard so typewriter keys would stop jamming. \n\nWell, we don't use typewriters anymore. Technology has caught up with human dexterity. Jamming keys are no longer a problem. And the gymnastics our fingers do on the Qwerty keyboard can exacerbate repetitive stress problems. \n\nIn the 1930s, Washington State University Professor August Dvorak came up with a more common-sense design that placed some of the most commonly typed letters, including vowels, on the home row. A typist can type about 400 of the most common words in the English language on the Dvorak keyboard home row, compared with about 100 on the Qwerty keyboard home row. The Dvorak keyboard is 28 percent faster and won't lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.Anyone can change the keyboard layout to Dvorak settings in Windows. And many who are battling RSI (repetitive stress injuries) have done so. But, as this Forbes article suggests, isn't it time for a new universal keyboard design that can help speed typing without mangling a new generation of hands?\nhttp://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/devlin/404\n\nSelect a Dvorak Keyboard Layout:\nAlternative keyboard layouts called "Dvorak" layouts may be helpful to people who type with one hand or finger. These layouts make the most frequently typed characters on a keyboard more accessible to people who have difficulty using the standard keyboard layout by reducing the amount of motion required to type common English text. Use of these layouts may also help avoid some types of repetitive strain injuries associated with typing. This tutorial tells you how to select a Dvorak layout in Windows XP.\nhttp://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/keyboardlayout.aspx
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The answer I heard was that in the old manual typewriters where metal keys would swing up on arms and hit the paper, that this was the arrangement made to both slow down typists and spread out the letters so that the arms would not lock up with one another.
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Christ Almighty..............this question is like code..........for petes sake use the goddamn keys. Is your key board broken or something...................
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The QWERTY design was patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873, when it first appeared in typewriters.\n\nFrequently used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document\n\n-The Wikipedia.\n\nThe other common key layout is the DVORAK, though it is not nearly so universal.
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Some like the enter/return, alt and shift key get their names from typewriters and word processors. The F keys get their name from early computers, F stands for Function. You wouldn't have enough memory to store programs on your computer, you'd load them from a floppy disc. The function keys allowed you to access the programs.
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the qwerty keyboard was designed purposely to be difficult to use because the early type writers would get jammed if you typed too quickly. Now we are stuck with them.\n\nStrange but true\n\nThink about it, the logical place to put the vowels and other common letters would be in the asdf jkl; positions as that's where your fingers start from
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The computer's name was "HAL."\n\nThey chose the letters that come before IBM.
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Here's what you need: \nPolaroid camera (optional)\nCotton swabs\nPaper towels\nDenatured alcohol\nCompressed air\nSmall screwdriver or butter knife\n\n\nHere's what you do: \nBefore you clean your keyboard, turn your computer off. Next, write down the locations of the keys (or take a photo) so you can put them back in the right places. \nUse a thin screwdriver or butter knife to gently pry up the rectangular keycaps. Don't try to remove the space bar, Shift key, Enter key, or any other oversize keys. They can be difficult to put back in place. \nIf liquid is present, sop it up with a paper towel. Use compressed air to remove hair, dust, and other loose materials. If you find built-up gunk, use a mild household cleaner on a cotton swab to clean it up. \nGently but firmly press each keycap back in place, following the layout in your diagram or photo.
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The layout of buttons you have mentioned is called the "QWERTY layout". The QWERTY layout is thought by some to be an inefficient one, 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 from wedging together and jamming the machine. A more 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.
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Shifting each key one to the left on a keyboard gives:\n"I got the first two workds. Nit it for kinda weird.".
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the 'qwerty' order of keys was originally arranged due to the limitations of mechanical typewriters... if you typed too quickly, the 'hammers' that printed the letters on the paper would become stuck together.\n\ntherefore, the keys had to be arranged in such a way that the typists would slow down and be less likely to jam the typewriter...
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Christopher Sholes invented the QWERTY typewriter and the keyboard evolved from that.
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Yes, that's because American keyboards are laid out differently than UK keyboards, as you found out.
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>>This keyboard combination was designed by David Bradley, a designer of the original IBM PC.