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From: forbes@sp11.csrd.uiuc.edu (Michael Scott Forbes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Chords (was Re: a plea to Apple -- something for the offhand
Message-ID: <1990Jul26.024139.11905@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 90 02:41:39 GMT
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Organization: Univ of Illinois, Center for Supercomputing R&D, Urbana, IL
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vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) writes:
>	I seem to recall that the military was experimenting with chord
>keyboards back in the '50s as a fast means of input.  And, not surprisingly,
>they were faster than QWERTY keyboards.  Them proved to be a fast and 
>accurate means of input, but lost out for the same reason that Dvorak
>keyboards aren't all over the place: inertia.

One of the psychology classes I took here at the University of Illinois
(the title was "Human Factors in Human-Machine Systems") talked about
QWERTY, DVORAK and chord keyboards, and how experiments and tests had
demonstrated the chord keyboards to be much faster than the other two,
and subject to fewer typing errors as well.

This information was part of a textbook example (literally) of why a
new, better way of doing something doesn't always catch on.  Mr. James'
point about inertia is well taken.  The short term cost-to-benefit ratio
is too high for any major employer of typists to consider changing over.

--
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Scott Forbes			University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
forbes@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu	Center for Supercomputing Research & Development
Disclaimer:  This job doesn't pay much, but it does wonders for my .signature