Why aren’t the letters arranged alphabetically on a keyboard?
When typing on your smartphone, laptops or tablets, you have noticed that the letters are not arranged alphabetically. Also, the letter row on your laptop keyboard or smartphone keypad has these as the first six letters: QWERTY. That’s why these are known as QWERT keyboards or QWERTY keypads. Ever wondered why such an arrangement was chosen for the letters of our keyboards and keypads? To find the answer to this, we must go back in time and peek into the time when typewriters were invented.
Early typewriters
About 200 years ago, everything, starting from manuscripts and letters to commercial paperwork, were handwritten. But this was laborious and time consuming. So, inventors thought of coming up with something that makes the process faster and easier and in came typewriters. In 1829, an American scientist named William Austin Burt developed a machine called a Typographer which is considered to be one of the earliest typewriters. But it was not particularly popular or successful commercially. Why? Because these typewriters were giant, heavy metal devices that were operated just like a piano. Have you ever seen the interior of a real piano? As you press a key, levers cause a felt hammer to strike the appropriate piano string precisely to produce a note. The first typewriters used a similar mechanism. They had a tonne of levers, each with a metal letter of the alphabet at the end. You had to push a letter key firmly to make the metal lever cross and strike the paper. When you press the ‘A’ key, the ‘A’ lever presses on the paper and types ‘A.’ The paper slid slightly to the left so the following key would land precisely where it was intended next to the ‘A’. The letter keys on early typewriters were arranged alphabetically. But there was a significant problem. What? The levers would jam (get stuck) if you pressed two keys consecutively. Jams were more likely to occur when two keyboard keys were nearby.
Inception of QWERTY Keyboard
This problem persisted even in the advanced and commercially successful typewriter invented by the American inventors Samuel W. Soule, Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden and Christopher Latham Sholes from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So, an innovation in the design of the typewriter was needed. And Christopher Sholes came to the rescue!
He experimented with several combinations to avoid pressing two keys that were close together. The best configuration he could discover resembled the QWERTY keyboard that we all use today. It was first used in the Sholes and Glidden Typewriter that came into being in the late 1870s and sold it to the American Remington Corporation. By 1877, they began creating and marketing the first commercially successful typewriters which most closely resemble the ones we use today!
Modern keyboards and the rise of keypads
By 1910, all typewriters were standardized, with highly similar resemblances, until the launch of IBM Selectric by the American architect Eliot Noyes in 1961. It used a spherical typeball rather than the usual typebars and was launched in 1961. The typeball's most prominent feature is that it entirely prevented 'jams' which brings us to the current era of typewriting.
With the rise in popularity of electronic devices like smartphones, several alternative keyboard layouts are being attempted. The challenge being to find one that is tiny enough to operate precisely. The 'soft keyboard' is one relatively common approach. A soft keyboard features a touchscreen-enabled visual display. Text is entered by tapping the keypads with a finger or stylus.
Half QWERTY keyboards
Have you seen the Nokia E55? It has a keyboard layout that is half QWERTY. Two characters share a key on a half QWERTY keyboard, which reduces the overall number of keys and improves the surface area of each key—beneficial for mobile phones with constrained keypad space. An alphanumeric keypad (one with letters and numbers on the keys) and a QWERTY keypad are combined to form a half-QWERTY keyboard designed for mobile phones.