Did you ever wonder where the lay out of letters and numbers for a typewriter came from? Qwerty from Wikipedia, "It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row letters. The original design, by C. Latham Sholes in 1874, had a serious jam issue. Characters were mounted on metal arms or typebars, which would clash and jam if neighboring arms were depressed at the same time or in rapid succession.'
"The solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs (like "th" or "st") so that their typebars were not neighboring, avoiding jams."
There is a myth the QWERTY was designed to "slow down" typists, this is not true. It was designed to prevent jams while typing fast.
I am not a very fast typist, something about hand/eye not working well together. I find it hard to text message on my phone also. Maybe I have learned QWERTY a little too well, better than I thought.
Please excuse the dust.
January 16, 2010
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