Aucb.515
fa.editor-p
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people
Tue Feb 23 00:10:18 1982
QWERTY was designed to slow typing down!
>From decvax!duke!bsb@Berkeley Mon Feb 22 23:47:01 1982
According to my reference material, the QWERTY keyboard was
first specified in 1867 (by Christopher L. Sholes), and was
NOT for a typewriter, but rather for a newspaper cold-type
machine.  The keys were specifically arranged with common key
pairs on the SAME hand to slow the typist down to give the
metal letters time to fall into the type tray.

There is a strong move on today to adopt the ASK (American
Simplified Keyboard), which is based on the DVORAK keyboard.
The newer keyboard is less error prone, loads up the right
hand more (for the more common right hander), and for a
decent typist improves performance surprisingly.  With only
one day of playing with a Dvorak keyboard, I was able to
type about %25 faster than the standard QWERTY layout.
(I am a touch typist.)

/Bruce Borden