The first computer I ever touched was a Commodore 64. It was so long ago that even the memories are a bit dusty, but I’m fairly sure that it was a thick keyboard that plugged in to an old TV. I think the contraption used cartridges similar to that of an Atari or even a Gameboy. My favorite computer game involved sliding beers down a bar and catching them before they could fall and smash—maybe not the most appropriate concept for a four-year-old, but it was so much fun.
When our family upgraded to an IBM, my dad was NOT
pleased the day that I popped off all the keys and rearranged them in alphabetical order.
He was, however, less crimson-faced than the time my
younger sister customized the side of his brand new company car with a stellar
drawing of a house, a tree, and a sun.
She’d etched it right into that shiny blue paint with a rock. (“But I just wanted to make it special, Daddy, so that you would always know which one was yours in the parking lot.”)
She’d etched it right into that shiny blue paint with a rock. (“But I just wanted to make it special, Daddy, so that you would always know which one was yours in the parking lot.”)
I think that all happened in the same week, actually.
Poor Dad. After that fiasco, I bet he wished typing was the only method of
self-expression.
It’s hard to believe that the next generation of computers
has implemented a virtual touchscreen keyboard. I’m still dependent on the tactile
feedback of the raised ridges of the f-key and the j-key for general typing
purposes, so if the traditional keyboard input style ever becomes endangered or
extinct, I’ll be that goof in the accessory
aisle trying to buy the aftermarket plug-in kind.
Here are a few things I found out in my quest for QWERTY
keyboard knowledge:
-The original QWERTY design—first developed for the
typewriter--dates back to 1873.
-The previous keyboard design, patented six years prior
to QWERTY, consisted of only two rows of keys. The numbers were located on the
left side, and the alphabet was presented alphabetically.
-The QWERTY design as we know it was developed to limit
opportunities for the machinery to jam. Each key on the typewriter was
connected to a bar and lever system. Rapid typists sometimes entered the keys
faster than the machination could execute the process. Clumsy typists sometimes
mashed keys together simultaneously. Both of these scenarios resulted in the
inner-workings becoming tangled.
-The placement of the vowels was especially important in
the desire to prevent jams and limit collisions. This was achieved by distributing
the vowels across the keyboard (and primarily in the same row).
-The 1878 model omitted the numerals 1 and 0, reasoning
it was a redundancy when lowercase-l or capital I and capital O could serve the
same purpose. (And all this time we’ve targeted teenage text-speak--like b4--
as a sign of Western Civilization’s decline!)
-Different countries have modified versions of the QWERTY
to honor the needs of their own languages.
-Another style of keyboard, called the Dvorak Simplified,
was created in 1936. Its inventors hoped to improve conditions and resolve some
of the issues of the QWERTY, especially with regard to finger motion, typing
rate, and error reduction. The DSK layout is dramatically different from the QWERTY.
While the effectiveness of this competitor is debatable, most major operating
systems do allow today’s users to elect this style for use.
-The style of keyboard that allows the absolute fastest
input isn’t really a keyboard at all. Court reporters and closed-captionists
use a stenography keyboard that contains far fewer keys, often unlabeled. These
trained professionals combine different keys simultaneously in a way that is
similar to playing chords on a piano in order to create whole phrases at a time.
If you are interested in learning more obscure
information about keyboards, you can check out these Wikipedia sites for yourself—trust
me, there’s more minutia where this came from!
I never consciously realized that all but one of the vowels are in the same row on the keyboard.
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