Qwerty
& Dvorak Keyboards!
Qwerty
keyboard layout was
designed by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and was patented by himself in
1874. In the
begining all keys were arranged alphabetically.
Later
he noticed that when
typists type at a faster rate the key would stick or jam. It is
believed that
he placed all frequently used keys as far apart from each other to
resolve this
problem.Thus the Q-W-E-R-T-Y design was formed to solve the slow
mechanical
movement of earlier typewriters. It was not designed for today’s use,
because
touch typing had not been developed at that time.
The
layout of the keyboard
letters on the home row is arranged as 'Q-W-E-R-T-Y'. Hence the name
'QWERTY'.
DVORAK
keyboard was patented in
1936 by Dr. August Dvorak, who worked as a professor and educational
psychologist in the University
of Washington.
The
Dvorak keyboard layout has
got all the vowels and consonants in the home row. These are the
letters a
typist uses most frequently. Thus, the DVORAK keyboard layout reduces
the
distance travelled by the fingers.
The
vowels and consonants are arranged in
such a way that a fast and accurate typing rythm can be achieved.The
keying is
right-hand, left-hand, right-hand and then left-hand. It is called back
and
forth flow, which makes typing much faster.
In a
Q-W-E-R-T-Y keyboard the typist’s
fingers has to cover a lot more distance than on a Dvorak keyboard.
Moreover,
the possibility of
having carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive motion injuries are
less
when we use DVORAK.
Even
if it is very good to use DVORAK
did not become popular. One of the reasons for this was: by the time
Dvorak was
designed there were hundreds of thousands of 'QWERTY'
typewriters available
and it would have cost a lot to convert them all to DVORAK.
Additionally, the
typists were already familiar with the "QWERTY" typewriters.
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