How does a QWERTY keyboard work?

The QWERTY keyboard is the standard for most computers today, but why are the letters arranged in such a peculiar way? Learn more about the QWERTY keyboard's unusual layout -- and how it compares to the Dvorak design -- in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From a single computer to tens of thousands of computers
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Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com where smart Happens.

(00:27):
Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, why are the
keys arranged the way they are on a quirty keyboard?
In eighteen seventy four, Remington and Sons manufactured the first
commercial typewriter, called the Remington Number one. This typewriter was
designed by Christopher Scholz and used the quirty keyboard we

(00:50):
are all familiar with. This early typewriter used a mechanism
with characters on the end of a bar. When a
key was struck, a link would swing the bar into
a tape coated with ink. When the character struck the tape,
the impression of the character was transferred onto the paper,
which was positioned behind the tape. Shul's original prototypes had

(01:15):
a problem with the bars colliding with each other and jamming,
so the story goes that he arranged the keys with
the most common letters in hard to reach spots to
slow type is down and try to avoid this problem.
It might seem odd that the keyboard layout that we're
using today, over a hundred years later, would be originally

(01:37):
designed for inefficiency, but nonetheless that seems to be the case.
Whatever the reason for the quarty layout, it seems pretty
unlikely that one of the first keyboard layouts invented would
be perfect, no matter what it looked like. The Corty
keyboard is therefore very different from the divorat keyboard, which
is trying to be super efficient. The divorat keyboard layout

(01:59):
tries to minimize the distance traveled by the fingers. It
also tries to make the typeest alternate hands on consecutive
letters as often as possible. The divorc lagout places all
of the most commonly used letters in the home rows
so that your fingers don't have to move at all
to hit these keys. The left hand has all the

(02:21):
vowels and some consonants, and the right hand has only consonants,
so there are very few words in the English language
that can be typed with only one hand on the
divorate keyboard. To our papaya and opaque. Both Pumpkin and
minimum can be typed with one hand on a Quarty keyboard.

(02:42):
Give it a try. You can find websites that show
the layout of the divorate keyboard and measure finger distances.
For example, if I had typed this article on a
divorate keyboard, my fingers would have traveled about thirty meters
versus the fifty four meters they traveled on a Quarty
key board that I used when I type this. Some argue, however,

(03:03):
that the divorat keyboard is no more efficient than a
Quarty keyboard. An independent study in nineteen fifty six showed
that Quarty type is and Divorac type has had about
the same rate of speed, and continued studies since then
don't show a clear winner between the two. This may
explain why Corty is still the standard. If you want

(03:25):
to see for yourself, you can switch your keyboard to
a divorc configuration just by changing a setting on your
computer's operating system. Depending on your keyboard, you may even
be able to pry off the keys and rearrange them
into the Divorac layout. Give it a try sometimes. Do
you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If

(03:45):
so please send me an email at podcast at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
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