Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: QUERTY (was one-finger keyboard)
Keywords: aside, largely-irrelevant
Message-ID: <20207@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 17 Oct 89 08:34:01 GMT
References: <1989Oct6.221013.8269@agate.berkeley.edu> <1259@cbnewsj.ATT.COM> <1989Oct16.142423.16103@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 21

In article <1989Oct16.142423.16103@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley) writes:
>... [the QUERTY layout] was designed to deliberately make English hard
>to type quickly so as not to jam up a mechanical keyboard ...

Not exactly.  Rather, it was designed to prevent typed English from
quickly jamming up a mechanical keyboard.  The first layout was
alphabetical, but this jammed too often; the QUERTY layout, by moving
commonly-struck keys farther away from each other in the basket, jammed
less often.

In other words, the point was not `go slower' but rather `avoid jams'.
Although the former yeilds the latter, that was not the `true purpose'
of QWERTY, or so say those who have studied the history, and in fact
QWERTY is not as terrible as all that.

Chris
-- 
`They were supposed to be green.'
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris