qwerty keyboard

[stoory]

Why are keyboards arranged 'qwerty' as oppossed to 'abcde'??

[Webitt]

Please see http://www.howstuffworks.com/question458.htm

[sft42]

If your too lazy to go to the link then the quick answer it that when keyboards first came out they were arranged abcdef but they tended to jam up with faster typists....so the qwerty was developed to slow down typists and stop the keyboard jamming up.

[Pinotage]

A more detailed - or pedantic - answer is that they are not. Keyboard layout differ considerably in different countries - just across the channel they use an AZERTY layout for instance.

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I have actually used an ABCDE layout. It was on the teletype of an ICL System 4/70 mainframe, the first computer I worked on in 1970. The ABCDE layout is very easy for non-typists as, if you know your alphabet, you know whereabouts to find the keys, eg A is at top left, Z is at bottom right and so on.

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Happy days then, when we had proper computers and no-one else knew about them, so if you said you worked with computers they said 'oh you must be clever' and didn't bore you going on about what machine they've got at home

[Ant]

The qwerty keyboard isn't designed to slow typing down as such. The layout was intended to place common two-letter combinations on opposite sides of the keyboard to stop typewrite levers jamming. When using typewriters the QWERTY layout would decrease the chance of the levers in the typewriter sticking together. Although now the majority of us use keyboards so this obviously eliminates any sticking levers. I suggest everybody looks into the Dvorak keyboard layout, typing in this layout can be 74% faster than qwerty, and accuracy increased by 68%. http://web.mit.edu/jcb/www/Dvorak/

[sft42]

If you read further down the page of your link Ant you'll find that these speed claims were completely debunked a few years after the war when they were established.....the Dvorak keyboard can be faster for most typists but will probably never become a true alternative for the same reasons the Betamax video went to the wall...once the public get used to a product even if a better substitute comes along it has to fight against the established brand.....

[Ant]

I agree, there will probably never be an alternative to the qwerty keyboard. I myself do not use the dvorak layout but I'm willing to give it a try and not overlook its claims. I was merely looking into stoory's question. I think the link I provided contains an unbiased view of the dvorak layout, and if you read on further he recommends the layout as relieving RSI and also preventing it further, which, of course, cannot be a bad thing. It may or may not increase the speed of a persons typing, but the whole concept of another, maybe even better, alternative keyboard layout should not be ignored, especially by those who suffer from RSI (straying away from the question now though).