A s d f j k l ;
Those were the first keys I learned in junior high school typing class. As most of us know, it’s the center row of a key board layout known as “QWERTY” – the first five letters of the keyboard below the numbers.
Almost all of us know how to type on a QWERTY keyboard as it has been the standard keyboard for most civilizations that use the Roman alphabet. What you may not know is that this keyboard was first designed by Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Lewis in 1867.
Now the reason for this rather confusing design of keys (one would think that it would have been designed with the most used keys in the center and the least used keys on the edges) was for just that opposite reason; Before the new design of the keys was introduced, the type-writer’s keys would jam if you typed very fast. That, in itself made writing by hand faster than typing on a type-writer (as they were called way back when.)
This invention allowed people to type substantially faster than a person could write by hand, and by 1878, Remington, who had bought the patent, manufactured the first typewriter with this keyboard configuration. The rest is history.
Now, why do I mention this?
I needed to buy stamps today. There is a small local post office near the studio where I work, and I thought I’d drop by there on my way home to pick up some stamps. There was only one employee, Victoria, working this afternoon. There was only one other person in front of me, so I thought I’d be just a few minutes and be on my way.
No such luck. It seems that this person was shipping a few boxes all of which needed insurance, special handling and priority mailing, all of which required Victoria to enter, multiple times, both the sender’s and sendee’s information. Not withstanding the usual unorganized nature of the USPS, Victoria had not learned to type on a standard keyboard. I guess if you work for the post office that’s not required of you if you work the window at one of the thousands of post offices throughout the USA. I guess the USPS never realized that there was a standard for typing, or that it might be important for employees to use such devices, even though it has been around since 1878.
So Victoria hunt and pecked for 7 minutes to ship the first package. I guess they don’t have a copy and paste option on their computers. Or, good old Victoria never learned that option, as it was pretty obvious she didn’t have any typing or computer skills. And we wonder why the USPS is under water.
As the line grew behind me, wrapping into where the P.O. boxes reside, and seeing the number of packages she had to process, I figured I’d be there for another half hour before I could buy my stamps, so I left.
But had the keyboard been laid out in a more friendly matter, even if Victoria had not learned to type, she could have processed the order more quickly.
Now, here’s my point (yes I have one), here is a keyboard that was designed over 130 year ago that is still in use today. Even my iPhone’s keyboard is laid out that way. Almost every keyboard in use today uses this obsolete inefficient design, even though there have been countless keyboards invented that are far superior to the very one that I’m typing on this inefficient one as I write this blog.
But there are many other things that hearken to an erstwhile day. My iPhone has an icon on it for voice messages, its two circles with a line at the bottom connecting the two, as if it were a tape machine. I haven’t used an answering machine with a tape in it for 20 years.
And it’s likely to become the iconic symbol for messages for generations to come that have no idea of what tape is, yet alone where it came from.
I know that there are many other examples of this that I’m not going to bore you with.
And all I wanted to do was buy some stamps, I could have printed them out on line. HA!
Those were the first keys I learned in junior high school typing class. As most of us know, it’s the center row of a key board layout known as “QWERTY” – the first five letters of the keyboard below the numbers.
Almost all of us know how to type on a QWERTY keyboard as it has been the standard keyboard for most civilizations that use the Roman alphabet. What you may not know is that this keyboard was first designed by Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Lewis in 1867.
Now the reason for this rather confusing design of keys (one would think that it would have been designed with the most used keys in the center and the least used keys on the edges) was for just that opposite reason; Before the new design of the keys was introduced, the type-writer’s keys would jam if you typed very fast. That, in itself made writing by hand faster than typing on a type-writer (as they were called way back when.)
This invention allowed people to type substantially faster than a person could write by hand, and by 1878, Remington, who had bought the patent, manufactured the first typewriter with this keyboard configuration. The rest is history.
Now, why do I mention this?
I needed to buy stamps today. There is a small local post office near the studio where I work, and I thought I’d drop by there on my way home to pick up some stamps. There was only one employee, Victoria, working this afternoon. There was only one other person in front of me, so I thought I’d be just a few minutes and be on my way.
No such luck. It seems that this person was shipping a few boxes all of which needed insurance, special handling and priority mailing, all of which required Victoria to enter, multiple times, both the sender’s and sendee’s information. Not withstanding the usual unorganized nature of the USPS, Victoria had not learned to type on a standard keyboard. I guess if you work for the post office that’s not required of you if you work the window at one of the thousands of post offices throughout the USA. I guess the USPS never realized that there was a standard for typing, or that it might be important for employees to use such devices, even though it has been around since 1878.
So Victoria hunt and pecked for 7 minutes to ship the first package. I guess they don’t have a copy and paste option on their computers. Or, good old Victoria never learned that option, as it was pretty obvious she didn’t have any typing or computer skills. And we wonder why the USPS is under water.
As the line grew behind me, wrapping into where the P.O. boxes reside, and seeing the number of packages she had to process, I figured I’d be there for another half hour before I could buy my stamps, so I left.
But had the keyboard been laid out in a more friendly matter, even if Victoria had not learned to type, she could have processed the order more quickly.
Now, here’s my point (yes I have one), here is a keyboard that was designed over 130 year ago that is still in use today. Even my iPhone’s keyboard is laid out that way. Almost every keyboard in use today uses this obsolete inefficient design, even though there have been countless keyboards invented that are far superior to the very one that I’m typing on this inefficient one as I write this blog.
But there are many other things that hearken to an erstwhile day. My iPhone has an icon on it for voice messages, its two circles with a line at the bottom connecting the two, as if it were a tape machine. I haven’t used an answering machine with a tape in it for 20 years.
And it’s likely to become the iconic symbol for messages for generations to come that have no idea of what tape is, yet alone where it came from.
I know that there are many other examples of this that I’m not going to bore you with.
And all I wanted to do was buy some stamps, I could have printed them out on line. HA!
