For all its emphasis on new things, technology often clings to some pretty old ideas. The standard QWERTY keyboard is one of them.
It is astonishing that a device developed nearly 140 years, which is impossible for people without the right level of dexterity or visual acuity to use, should still be the standard way of entering data and commands into a computer.
Designed in 1873 to prevent the keys on a mechanical typewriter from clashing, the QWERTY keyboard is the great survivor. The inventor of the typewriter, Christopher Shole, redesigned his original alphabetical keyboard so that the most used keys were furthest from one another, to prevent them from jamming.
There have been efforts to improve on Shole’s design. In the 1930s August Dvorak came up with an alternative layout that uses less finger motion and hence puts less stress on a typist’s hands. Dvorak claimed his keyboard resulted in increased typing rates and reduced typing errors.
However, although Dvorak’s key layout is today incorporated into most computer operating systems, it never really caught on. The US government, in a damning 1950s report, concluded the cost of retraining typists and buying new keyboards outweighed potential efficiency gains.
Early on the QWERTY keyboard also began to come under fire for ergonomic reasons. Researchers claimed that the layout meant that the weaker ring and little fingers were overworked.
In 1926, EA Klockenberg described how the keyboard layout required the typist to assume body postures that were “unnatural, uncomfortable and fatiguing”. He suggested that the keyboard be divided into two halves (one half for each hand) and that the halves should slope sideways to reduce the muscle tension in the shoulders and arms.
It wasn’t until the veteran UK entrepreneur Stephen Hobday teamed up with typing expert Lillian Malt that the keyboard got a serious revamp. Hobday’s standard three dimensional Maltron keyboard, produced in the seventies, has a cup shape for the hands, an outward slant and a key layout that brings a typist’s thumbs into play.
Alternative forms of keyboard followed thick and fast: one handed keyboards, chord keyboards that involve pressing several keys at once, keyboards controlled by head pointers and touch screen keyboards.
Software developers began adapting their operating systems to allow users to get round the hurdle of having to press several keys at once, while onscreen keyboards allowed users to select characters using a switch or an eye gaze system.
Many people hoped that voice recognition would do away with the need for keyboards altogether, but that has not happened yet.
It would be nice to get out of the Victorian era and into a world in which users are free to control a machine simply by speaking, but we are going to have to stick with QWERTY for a good while yet.