Trivia Friday

Have you ever wondered how the keyboard was invented? 

I hadn't given it much thought, actually the truth is no thought, I just kept tapping away day after day taking all that letter placement for granted. I have often thought about learning to type properly rather than touch typing and I have thought about the way the keys can feel on other keypads, but never have I thought about why the letters were where they were. I think this is very remiss of me as I spend many hours of every day tapping away either on my laptop or on my blackberry.

Which brings me to the blackberry and why I started to think about the order of the keys. 

My blackberry and I are pals - we are kind of inseparable these days - and I have come to depend on this little techno friend to keep me connected. I am one of those guilty addicts who can't resist the red flash so if that offends please read no more. In my defense I do know when to turn her off and when she should remain silent. 

We had a little tiff the other day - she thinks I did it on purpose but I promise, cross my heart, it was an accident; the poor thing, she fell in a mug of tea. For my punishment she refused to talk - no signal, no red flash and no response to my ever so gentle tapping of her keyboard. In panic - I really can't live without her -I tried the rice trick (taking her apart and submerging all her bits in a bed of dry rice). That didn't work at first, but persistent as I am, I didn't give up and back in she went. When her time was up and she was all back together she teased me with a few red flashes, minx that she is. I thought I was in business; I was, except the keyboard had malfunctioned and the letters I pressed did not correspond to the letters that appeared on the screen.

Where had my 'taken for granted' QWERTY keyboard gone? How impossible it was to type without that familiar positioning. I decided I needed to know who invented the keyboard as we know it.

It was Mr Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor by profession, who perfected the typewriter. Originally the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows but that presented a problem if the keys were struck too fast - they would stick together and jam the typewriter. To make the machine more efficient he needed to slow it down so the easiest way was an alternative keyboard configuration. He and two friends placed the keys into three lines and broke the letters up so that those most commonly used were not next to each other. In 1873 he sold the machine to Remington, who mass produced the QWERTY keyboard, and the rest is history.

(A little bit more trivia - I had never realized that the top line of a keyboard can spell out the word 'typewriter' - how clever of Mr Sholes and what a great marketing tool for Remington.)

The rice trick finally worked  - I would have been very sad if forced to trade her for a younger model. I am delighted to report that my blackberry and I are firm mates again and qwerty is as qwerty does. xv

image - google

trivia - ft weekend, rosie blau