Why is keyboard not in alphabetical order

The paper then shifted a bit to the left, so the next key would hit in just the right place next to the A. Press more keys and you could type a word, or even a whole book. The first machine had the letter keys in alphabetical order. The trouble was that if you hit two keys quickly the levers would jam. Jams were most likely when the two keys were close together on the keyboard.

Rearranging the letters could reduce jams. Christopher Sholes was an American inventor who was most successful in reducing jams. He tried various arrangements, always trying to reduce the need to type two keys that were close together.

He sold his invention to the Remington Company in the United States. In the s, that company built and sold the first commercially successful typewriters. For years or so after the Remington typewriter arrived, vast numbers of people all over the world trained to become touch typists meaning they could type even without looking much at the keyboard. They were employed to type letters and all other kinds of things for business and government. Because so many people became so skilled at using QWERTY, it became very difficult to get everyone to change to any other key arrangement.

Many other key arrangements have been tried. It seems that we are stuck with this layout, even if jams are no longer a problem. Some other languages use variations. Ask them to show you the keyboard they use in their language. Now, on any keyboard, feel the F and J keys carefully and find some tiny bumps.

Place your first fingers on those keys, and your other fingers along the same row. When you push the button with the letter, it activates a small type lever with a cast matrix of this letter on its top.

This type lever hits the ribbon soaked with ink, which occupies the position between lever and paper. This is how we get the print. While typing a text, levers hit the paper one by one.

First typewriters invented by Christopher Sholes had the alphabetic arrangement of letters within two rows. Only capital letters were allowed while numbers 1 and 0 were printed with the help of I and O. It was acceptable at the beginning, but later these typewriters became problematic since the speed of typing grew.

In an attempt to separate them, one could break the whole mechanism. It happened because there are many neighboring letters in the English alphabet which are used more frequently than others e. As a result closely situated keys were pushed one after another that caused clinging and jam-up. Typewriter manufacturers decided to invent a keyboard with neighboring letters separated from each other so that they could be far enough for index finger as previously people printed with first fingers only instead of using ten finger method.

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