chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) (10/17/89)
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