CHAPTER III

ALTERNATIVES LAYOUTS FOR THE QWERTY KEYBOARD

3.1 The Origin of the Modern Computer Keyboard

The origin of the modern computer keyboard began with the invention of the typewriter by Christopher Latham Sholes in September of 1867. The device was patented the following year. It was improved and marketed by Remington beginning about 1877. By the beginning of the 20th century the typewriter was finding its way into businesses.

Among the problems that Sholes and his associates addressed was the jamming of the keys when certain combinations of keys were struck in very close succession. As a partial solution to this problem, Sholes arranged his keyboard so that the keys most likely to be struck in close succession were arranged at locations at opposite sides of the keyboard. Since QWERTY (named for the first letters appearing on the top row of keys) was designed to accomplish this now obsolete mechanical requirement, maximizing speed was not an explicit objective. As a result of this arrangement, the keys that were used most frequently were not easily accessible to the typist which effectively reduced the speed at which human users could type. Some authors even claim that the keyboard is actually configured to minimize speed since decreasing speed would have been one way to avoid the jamming of the typewriter.[1]

3.2 The Dvorak Alternative

Dvorak Key Layout is an alternative arrangement of the keyboard's alphabetic keys in a layout that more evenly distributes typing among the fingers of both hands.  In 1936, August Dvorak, a professor of statistics at the University of Washington, proposed rearranging the keyboard’s alphabetic keys in a layout that is more equitable to the fingers. His design improved efficiency by placing common letters on the home row and also making the stronger fingers do most of the work. On this keyboard, over three thousand words can be typed using only the home row. In fact, 70% of all the work can be done on the home row, 80% of this time on their home keys (where your fingers rests when not being used), 22% on the row above, and 8% on the row below. In addition, on Dvorak's keyboard, the right hand handles 56% of the work load and the left handles 44%, just about opposite the division on the QWERTY keyboard. This is an advantage for most right-handers. On the QWERTY keyboard, only 32 percent of English keystrokes are on the home row)[2]. Using Dvorak, more than 400 common words can be typed without leaving the home row compared to only 100 or so on the QWERTY home row.[3]

Figure 3-1: The Dvorak Keyboard Layouts

The Dvorak design arranged the ten most frequently used letters on the home row. The locations were governed by the concept that alternate hand keying on standard keyboards is faster than lateral keying. QWERTY has only three of the 20 commonest digraphs[5] in lateral positions and they are on the Upper row. 'ER, RE' and 'TE' with 'T' in stretch position.) The QWERTY design with its vertical rows on a diagonal slant and flat horizontal rows, also inhibits lateral keying.^[6]

Because Dvorak accepted that all contra-lateral keying was faster than all lateral keying, he placed all the vowels next to each other under the fingers of the left hand and the most frequently used consonants under the fingers of the right hand.

3.3 The Successes and Failures of the Dvorak Layout

The Dvorak layout has been accepted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1982 and has its advocates. It was patented in the U.S. (Patent No. 2,040,248).  However, it has not received wide-spread acceptance because of the many typists trained to use QWERTY keyboards and the costs related to switching over to a new keyboard design. Some keyboard users have found benefit from the Dvorak layout and a few keyboard manufacturers are providing Dvorak versions of their keyboards. The Dvorak keyboard has been claimed to be greatly superior to the standard typewriter keyboard. However, none of the earlier research on the relative merits proved increased productivity over time[7].

Apart from the fact that existing typists didn't wish to re-learn their trade, America was in the heart of the depression years, which meant that the last thing anyone wanted to do was to spend money on a new typewriter.

QWERTY has been considered by many as a classic example of Path Dependency. Path Dependency is the tendency to stay to a certain path, trend, technology, method or location, even if more promising alternatives show up. “Technical interrelatedness, economies of scale, and quasi-irreversibility of investment constitute the basic ingredients of what may be called QWERTY-nomics.”^[8] Unfortunately, society is committed to the old system, because it is too costly to re-train all typists and retool all keyboard production everywhere. Path dependency has been found in countless other parts in the economy as well, such as the English vs. the metric system of measurement. Liberals argue that high short-term costs prevent long-term beneficial change, and the market alone does not seem to correct for this failure.

Typing gurus and academics have also long debated how much faster Dvorak is than QWERTY. Dvorak appears to increase mechanical keyboard speeds only 5-10%. A recent study[9] (1998) claims a 4% speed advantage for the Dvorak keyboard over QWERTY. It would seem that the retraining time and equipment purchase costs required to achieve the 4% advantage would certainly counteract the gains.

Early studies done by the U.S. General Services Administration in 1953 appear to give a more objective conclusion than that of Dvorak on his layout. They found that QWERTY typists were about as fast as Dvorak typists, or faster[10]. Good typist are fast, regardless of the keyboard used and typing proficiency is only a matter of practice. But others argue that these studies failed to observe that the participants previously all had been QWERTY typists and had to go through a transition. The only acceptable study, they claim, would be one in which all the participants had never typed before.

Has the Dvorak keyboard failed? One thing is clear: it greatly (90%) reduces finger motion and travel off home row! This can be very helpful for people whose hand or wrist injuries make repeated finger stretches painful. Many believe that with the expansion of repetitive strain injuries (cumulative trauma disorders) caused by its use, Dvorak’s layout might have a second chance:

“By virtue of its overwhelming prevalence the traditional QWERTY keyboard layout has dominated, and continues to dominate, as an input paradigm. Its days as such are numbered however. The continued physical toll in mounting injuries to its users will inevitably highlight the history of this device. The glaring fact that it was never born of any rational design with regard to the anatomy of its intended users, but rather simply evolved from a century of happenstance invention, will eventually cause its role as an interface technology to be reevaluated. Those injured by this device, a group composed predominately of computer literate individuals, will create the core constituency who will lead the charge for its demise. Aided by the increasing power of computing, and entrepreneurs who will harness that power in increasingly ingenious ways, new interface technologies will evolve. We must only hope that the type of market forces that suppressed acceptance of the Dvorak keyboard layout for 60 years will not also doom these new technologies. If so it would surely prove the keyboard a tyrant.”[11]

People who would make such complaints however, are still a minority. Change to a historically accepted standard has always been a slow process. Supply and demand is still the cornerstone of marketing and demand for the Dvorak layout is small. It is even more so if the layout conversion is neglected by the community that it is suppose to benefit: the professional typists.

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