The QWERTY keyboard - here to stay?

Here's a transcript of my radio broadcast on the ABC's Ockham's Razor.  It explains why we are stuck with the clunky QWERTY keyboard.

Broadcast on Sunday 29 July 2012 9:45AM

Image: (bennylin0724)

There is no sense to its layout. Touch typists have wired their brains for the qwerty keyboard. Despite some attempts to introduce other layouts, qwerty has become part of almost every digital device which requires human input. The qwerty keyboard seems embedded and immovable.  Robin Robertson discusses the history of qwerty and the power of touch typists.

• ABC Radio National

Ockham's Razor

Robyn Williams:  When did you learn to type? We all do it now, don’t we? We have to. I learned to type (or really to hunt and peck) when I was 12. My mother had organised several hundred envelopes that needed to be addressed and there was no question of making mistakes, so I spent untold hours, over several days slowly pecking away until some muscle and eye knowledge of the keyboard got sort of wired in. It’s been there ever since, the bad habits have become engrained.
And the first thing you notice as the patterns become familiar is that they are nuts. None of it makes sense. This is even more apparent when you go to Japan or Italy or some other place where the A seems to have gone feral or the @ disappears somewhere. Why is there no consistency? Why is it all so bizarre?
Here with some answers is Robin Robertson, social historian, from Sydney.


Robin Robertson:  The keyboard for typing has never had it so good.  It is everywhere, taking centre stage on any desk and always with its sidekick the computer.  Even if there is no desk, we’ll still find a keyboard, ready and willing in our mobile phones and laptops.
The keyboard is the public face of our computers, mobile phones and digital toys and is the only way we can speak to them.   Indeed, it is the core of all communication in a cyber world and without it we’d be struck dumb.
We’ve had a long relationship with the keyboard.  It’s been around for about 140 years and it has never let us out of its sight, although, if the truth be told, we have long since moved on.  The problem is the layout of the keyboard.  It is clunky and illogical.  It is as outdated as carbon paper.  Why is it still with us?
This layout has a pet name.  It’s called, fondly or not, after the first six letters on the upper row – QWERTY.  QWERTY is the love child of touch typists.  They are its steadfast disciples because it is the secret of their command of the keyboard. Without touch typists QWERTY would have been trampled by the march of progress – but more about them later.
QWERTY started life on a mechanical typewriter, then hitched a ride on advancing technology into the computer and mobile phone.  Nowadays QWERTY has a worldwide following.  It tops the list of any product to be collectively adopted despite the fact that it offers no technological advantage.
Isn’t it time we ditched it?
Well, I don’t think QWERTY is going away any time soon.  It has technology over a barrel because it is as deeply embedded in its systems as the alphabet.  But did you know that QWERTY’s clumsiness was a deliberate part of its original design?
The first keyboards on a mechanical typewriter were laid out in alphabetical order.  However, under the control of a competent typist, this layout caused the type bars to entangle as they hammered towards the one small target and arrived at the same time.  To solve this problem, a mathematician was called in to do the sums; he calculated the odds when typing the English language, on how often each key would be called into action.  He then dazzled everyone by creating what he called the ‘scientific’ keyboard in an arrangement that spread the more popular keys as far from each other as possible.  This was designed to slow the typist, while also sharing the load over most of the fingers.
QWERTY’s career was launched, although the layout varied slightly to accommodate differences in language.  For instance in French speaking countries, the layout is AZERTY.  Nowadays, QWERTY typists can be roughly divided into two schools of thought.  There’s a hunt and peck school that relies on seeing the keys and the touch typist school that relies on not seeing them.
Hunt and peck can tell you where the ‘u’ key is by sight.  They are sometimes called ‘biblical typists’ meaning “Seek and ye shall find”.  Speaking as a touch typist I can assure you that hunt and peck requires no training or finesse, is primitive, slow and prone to errors – but I digress.
Touch typists take a certain pride in the fact that they cannot tell you where the ‘u’ key is.  They can only find it by muscle memory.  After months of rigorous training and long hours of practice they are conditioned to set their fingers on the home keys.  From there the index finger of the right hand automatically seeks out the ’u’ which is up one row and slightly to the left. In fact, the mere sight of a keyboard unsettles touch typists because they know it will interfere with their programming.
Their skill, being the creation of words, is buried so deep in their subconscious that it is, curiously enough, beyond words.  It lies dormant and is mostly harmless – unless someone tried to take it away from them.
Being QWERTY androids, touch typists will not listen to sweet reason, that the mechanics of a superseded typewriter are irrelevant to the computer keyboard, in a cyber environment there are no keys to jam, that QWERTY has lost its justification for cluttering up the keyboard, that it should be replaced by a logical layout.  This is not a new idea.  Many have tried to replace QWERTY – all have failed.
One serious challenge to QWERTY arose in 1932 when Dr August Dvorak patented a simplified keyboard layout.  A battle for dominance between keyboard layouts ensued and it was clear that a single standard had to be set.  Many had a financial stake in QWERTY
First and most intractable were those touch typists who had been created in the millions by both their education and typewriter manufacturers.  Large manufacturers were also reluctant to risk an investment on a new layout as typewriters were expensive machines. 
And bringing up the rear were colleges for secretarial studies, where typing training was almost always with QWERTY for two reasons – to meet expectations of the industry and because it was already familiar to most teachers and trainers.  In this way, history conspired to lock in QWERTY.
Dr Dvorak died a disappointed man, never to know that his keyboard was not a complete dud and that it would one day become a standard option in many computer systems with a switchable Dvorak/QWERTY keyboard.  In fact his layout was used by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer.
Here’s how Dvorak’s layout works.  The most popular letters take pride of place on the keyboard and become the new home keys on the middle row.  They are A, O, E, U, I, D, H, T, N, S.  The less popular ones P, Y, F, G, C, R, L are at the top and replacing QWERTY and the also rans Q, J, K, X, B, M, W, V, Z on the bottom row.  Dvorak proponents claim this layout uses less finger motion than QWERTY, reduces errors and we could also type 35% faster.
The world typing speed record holder for 1985 Barbara Blackburn used the Dvorak keyboard to clock a peak speed of 212 words per minute on an electric typewriter.  She could maintain 150 words per minute for 50 minutes.  The winner in the Ultimate Typing Championship final in 2010, American Sean Wrona, used a QWERTY computer keyboard to achieve sprint speeds of 256 words per minute.  You can check it out on YouTube.
But for our daily general input, do we want to type so fast?  Computer keyboards are not designed for quick data entry. They are intended for filling in forms or making comments or witty quips in emails, tweets or facebook, or simply ticking the box. For the longer format, beyond one paragraph, the computer keyboard is ideal for visual thinking.
Moreover, typing is no longer the exclusive domain of purpose-built typists, a skill that enabled many to earn a respectable living from the 1930s onward.  In the lost era of mechanical and electrical typewriters, touch typists were employed in offices with a strict division of labour, those who typed and those who did not.  Those who did not type were management and their function was not clear except that they were climbing the corporate ladder and typing was not in keeping with their status.
Enter the computer with its flashy screen and email links and a generation later, typing is hot. Now everyone types. It is the new handwriting and is the only way to get your message across.  In fact, it is now the primary tool of personal communication.  And the latest technological developments are now signalling a new direction for the keyboard.
For instance, the mobile phone keyboard has now been shrunk to fit and only allows texting with two very small thumbs.  Speed does not enter into it. Then there’s the virtual keyboard on the flat touch screen of a tablet computer.  QWERTY appears invitingly on the screen ready to do your bidding.  But make no mistake, this keyboard is designed for the hunt and peck school.  If, as a touch typist, you rest your fingers on the home keys, the screen erupts into a nonsense of letters.
In a reversal of established typing conventions, the virtual keyboard is insisting that you back off, do your thinking elsewhere and return when you have something to say.  The QWERTY keyboard, which was custom designed for touch typing, is now untouchable.  Is this where the next generation of keyboards is heading?
As your hands hover over the flat touch screen, do you accept its conditions of use and just get on with the job? Or will you reject it as yet another tyranny of the keyboard that has a strangle hold on the future?
Of course you still have the option of old technology.  You can circumvent this virtual keyboard and buy a detachable and touchable keyboard (which is so last year) to plug into your tablet computer.
Resistance to change is not new.  It has always been with us.  One of the first concepts for a keyboard was copied from the past; the black and white keys of the piano.  If you could play the piano and many did in those days, you could make yourself useful and type.
When the first typewriter went into commercial production in America there was no market for it.  Remington & Sons took it on when demand for guns dried up what with the end of the Civil War and all.  Production of typewriters replaced guns in the factory.
Next was marketing.  Typewriter manufacturers were giving consumers what they wanted before they knew they wanted it and over 100 years later, Steve Jobs did the same with the computer.  It was a new invention and useless unless someone could operate it.  Manufacturers trained women to type and more or less ‘marketed’ them along with the machines.  In effect, the typewriter was the hardware and the typists were programmed as the compatible software. From then on QWERTY was in safe hands.
In later years, the push to introduce a more efficient keyboard layout and ditch QWERTY had to contend with these women.  They controlled the keyboard and by extension production of the written word.
And believe me, you come between a touch typist and QWERTY- at your peril.

Robyn Williams: Robin Robertson and some typing history.
And wouldn’t it be nice to take away all those guns from wild-eyed young men and to give them typewriters instead, like the one I’m using right now? Dear thing, it says it’s Jurassic.
Next week we go to southern New South Wales where Mark Whittaker has a field full of cattle. Are they really farting us into oblivion, or are there green cows as well?

Guests

Robin Robertson

Writer and social historian
Sydney

Credits

Presenter

Robyn Williams

Producer

David Fisher

Sundays 7:45am

Presented by Robyn Williams

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