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Aucb.515 fa.editor-p utcsrgv!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

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