“QWERTY wasn't designed to solve type bar jamming” [pdf]
15 comments
·March 16, 2025readthenotes1
"The legend was referred by Prof. James V. Wertsch,[22, 23] a professor of the Department of Psychology, Clark University, then it was regarded as an established theory in the field of psychology. "
The reproducibility crisis struck early, it seems.
somat
Ha. so the reason that I is next to 8 is that early typewriters used the I as a 1(no independent 1 key) and the morse transcription company wanted to type years(1871) quickly. I love it.
frompdx
The keyboard arrangement was incidentally changed into QWERTY, first to receive telegraphs, then to thrash out a compromise between inventors and producers, and at last to evade old patents.
userbinator
Whatever its intent, QWERTY definitely hasn't impeded the fastest typists, who can regularly exceed 200wpm these days.
Odd to see no mention of the Linotype layout, also known as the "Etaoin Shrdlu", given that was also a common competing keyboard layout in that era.
0cf8612b2e1e
Humans do not have fins, but Micheal Phelps can still cut through water. That elites can thrive is not a compelling argument when most people just want technology to get out of the way.
An alternative layout with commonly used symbols on the home row makes the QWERTY deficiencies immediately apparent. Significantly less effort required for writing prose when using something like DVORAK.
karmakaze
I got into alternate keyboard layouts and developed my own (roughly an optimized NIRO). When I tried using it on my small Surface Go I found that my fingers would 'jam' typing letters close together, so I leave that in QWERTY so it happens much less.
0cf8612b2e1e
I can believe it. For a physical keyboard, I would much prefer a layout with a DVORAK-like home row, but probably not for mobile. The imprecision of touch and swiping text entry likely do markedly worse when high frequency characters are on top of each other.
kreyenborgi
Pretty sure Micheal Phelps has fins though
weinzierl
I don't follow the connection to Morse. Can someone summarize their argument in a comprehensive way?
bluGill
The first typewriters were for telegraph operators turning morse code into written letters.
null
The_suffocated
Very interesting article. I don’t understand, however, how shorthanders used typewriters for short-writing. The figure on p.168 (above fig. 9) is not explanative.
yorwba
The numbers above the words indicate which finger (index, middle, ring) is used to press a key, the letters below indicate the hand (left or right). Basically a precursor of touch typing that doesn't use the little fingers and doesn't always use the same finger for the same key.
The actual shorthand would be written on paper, with the typewriter being used to expand it to a more readable form.
The_suffocated
Thank you. I mistakenly thought the typewriter was used to type shorthands.
In the next century, researchers will discover that the GUI wasn't designed to make computing harder by forcing people to find cryptic little symbols, randomly arranged on the screen, and break routine operations into tiny sequences of manual steps. And it wasn't called a "personal computer" because it turned each person into a computer.