If a typewriter keyboard was rearranged to optimise typing speed, in English, which keys would be where?

lanfranco

I think that in the Dvorak system of 1932, the vowels -- the most-used letters -- would be in the "home row," that is, the second row from the bottom. I recently read in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel," that the Qwerty keyboard was devised in the 19th century as a way of slowing down 19th-century typists at a time when the keys tended to stick. There seems to be some dispute about this. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html Apr 17 05, 5:36 PM

MrsAce

The numbers keys were always a problem to me. Prefer them as they are on a computer keyboard. Apr 18 05, 5:10 AM

Baloo55th

It wasn't so much the keys that stuck as the little type bars. When two letters have type bars close to each other and they are struck at the same time, that's when you get a jam. If letters commonly together on the page are coming from opposite sides of the thingy, you may get a bounce but you won't get a jam. As lanfranco says, this is a disputed theory, but one I can go along with having grown up on typewriters. (Had one in for sale once that would fox a touch typist - it had a key for everything. No shift. And a built in adding machine. WW I period. Made £10 on it, which wasn't bad as I only paid £5 for it.) Apr 18 05, 5:28 AM

lanfranco

I should amend my remarks on the Dvorak keyboard, which is apparently still of interest to people and is actually being used. It places the most commonly-used consonants on one side of the middle, or home, row, and the vowels on the other. This supposedly results in faster and more ergonomically-correct typing. http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/layout.html Apr 18 05, 6:46 PM

gmackematix

Thanks Frankie. Third from each end of the middle seems a funny place for the commonest letters E and T. If the "Caps Lock" is in the same place then I notice the "A" is still annoyingly neAR TO IT. Apr 18 05, 7:12 PM

lanfranco

Gmack, I answered your query on the Laocoon theory. You might want to take a look. Apr 18 05, 7:12 PM