Why are the letters on the keyboard in this order? Why are the letters on the keyboard not in alphabetical order? Truth: thanks Morse code

When someone sees a computer keyboard for the first time, the question arises, "Why are the letters on the keys not in alphabetical order?" In this article, we give a comprehensive answer to this question.

Look at your computer keyboard. Isn't it true that it is difficult to find logic in such an arrangement of letters? The letters are not in their usual positions - according to the alphabet, the letter "A" should be located at the beginning of the first line of keys. Wouldn't it be ideal solution? Or the letter "W", which is on the first line, instead of on the last. This arrangement of letters is called the QWERTY layout, based on the first 6 letters on the keyboard. So why complicate things and not make the keyboard clear and convenient?

To understand the logic of the arrangement of letters according to the “QWERTY” standard, we must go back to the past, to the end of the 19th century, when K. Scholes presented the first typewriter with such an arrangement of letters. At the time, the arrangement of letters on typewriters was alphabetical. But then a technical problem awaited the manufacturers. The typewriter had metal arcs with letters at the ends. And when typing text quickly, if the letters being printed were nearby, these arcs interlocked with each other. This took some time, and the overall productivity of typists fell.

To solve this problem, K. Scholes compiled a list of the most common letter combinations in English words and, having studied it, came up with a new layout. Now, although the typing speed has slowed down a bit, the adjacent letters in the words have been spread across the keyboard, which reduces the likelihood of arcs sticking.

With the advent of computers in the 40s of the 20th century, typewriters were supplanted by new devices, and now it was possible to return to the keyboards (already computers) a layout with keys in alphabetical order. However, a problem arose here: the people typing on the computer were the same people who typed on the typewriters. They needed to retrain to the new layout. However, the companies did not want to spend money on retraining employees, and it was decided to leave the keyboard layout.

• on the existing layout, you can find a little of the alphabetical layout. Looking at the middle row of keys, you will find the letters "DFGHJKL" arranged in alphabetical order, excluding "E" and "I";
• the eight keys on the middle row of the keyboard are called the "home row". These are the keys you must place your fingers on in order to type faster;
• the "QWERTY" keyboard is more suitable for left-handers, as there are letters on the left side, with which you can type more words than using right side keyboards;
• you can find all the letters of the word “typewriter” on the top line of the keyboard.

As we have seen, typewriters are to blame for today's keyboard difficulties. However, we are so used to the existing layout that we even introduced it into mobile phones.

A question for connoisseurs: why the letters in the keyboard are not alphabetical. for example, it should be in alphabetical order a b c d e in the clave and c uke why

Regards, Razor

Best Answers

Timofey:

It is clear that they are located for a reason. If you disassemble a keyboard on a computer and a typewriter and compare them ... then it turns out that the arrangement of letters on them is absolutely the same. In fact, the keyboard was not invented for convenience, but, on the contrary, to slow down the typing speed. And it was this goal - to reduce the speed of the typesetter - pursued by the inventor of the typewriter!

The first commercial typewriter was invented by Christopher Sholes. It happened almost 150 years ago in the United States.

We can say that this machine was extremely inconvenient. The person who tried to print something was deprived of the opportunity to follow the result. Hammers with letters were under the sheet of paper. But in spite of everything, people have learned to type quite fluently, even on these terrible typewriters. After a while, another problem arose: all the warranty repair shops were inundated with returned typewriters.

During the printing process, individual hammers regularly interlocked with each other, and their separation often led to breakage. In those days, the letters on the keys were arranged in alphabetical order.

Let's conduct an experiment - circle with a felt-tip pen those often used in english language letters that stand side by side. It turns out that the situation when two adjacent keys were pressed is common. Too often! Two adjacent buttons pressed almost simultaneously caused the hammers to interlock and wedge each other.

The conclusion suggests itself - it is necessary to spread frequently repeated letters away from each other. So Christopher Sholes did it. It became inconvenient to type texts. But the hammers stopped breaking. The goal was achieved. And in 1874 the Remington 1 typewriter was born. The arrangement of letters on it began not as before with ABCDEF, but with QWERTY. This arrangement of Latin letters has survived to this day!

Mechanical typewriters improved. It was on the QWERTY keyboard that the ten-finger touch typing method was first introduced. Up to this point, they typed with four fingers, although there are still people who use only two index fingers. The striving for perfection did not end there. In the 40s of the last century, American Arthur Dvorak proposed his own version of the arrangement of Latin letters. He calculated that it is more convenient when the frequently used letters are in the middle and upper rows. Under the left hand in the middle row, he placed all the vowels, under the right hand the most frequent consonants. The load on the arms turned out to be more balanced.

Let's try this invention on ourselves. And - let's calculate that in an 8-hour working day, our fingers make about two kilometers on the new keyboard. While on a traditional QWERTY keyboard, the same indicator was already 7 kilometers, which, you see, is much more!

Why didn't Dvorak manage to convince the whole world of the usefulness of his rationalization proposal? Perhaps only because no one dared to renounce the millions of machines, which by that time had faithfully served humanity.

Now let's move from America to Russia. Here typewriters appeared later than in the USA. By this time, the designers had eliminated many technical imperfections. The hammers no longer clung to each other. That is why in Russia the letters were placed rationally - often used letters ended up in the middle of the keyboard.

Knoxville:

The most commonly used keys are in the center, the rest at the edges.
For convenience and speed of writing.

Nikita Voronin:

If alphabetically it's not interesting

Fartushnaya Elena:

because there are strong fingers and weak
near the strong are those letters that are most often used
and those that are least often on the little fingers

Overclocker:

in the center are the most used symbols.
on the edges - rarely used.

Astaroth:

Here on a mobile phone everything goes alphabetically. And how is it? Is it convenient to use? For me, it's not like that, only 1 finger is involved, even when you type on the keyboard of the smartphone where each letter is a key. Inconvenient. Conclusion: the keyboard is a miracle of developers, created when there was no PC in sight, and no sensor can replace it 😉

Cactus on the tongue:

because in the center of the keyboard are letters that are often used ...

Video response

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Answers from experts

Shooter:

When, after 2 glasses, you type the text, the main letters will be in the center !! ! :-))))))

Ivan:

because it is necessary

Aram Solakhyan:

they are located so that the letters combined in words go side by side and it is convenient to type.

You just studied the wrong alphabet.;)

Erika:

well, to make it convenient to quickly type. The letters that are more often used are in the middle to find them faster. Letters b, b e, e are further away)

Mikhail Morozov:

ask.yandex /questions/i67464434.138/

Bynthys:

Valentina Lichikova:

so it is more comfortable for fingers when typing blindly

i don’t know how you are, everything is fine with me))) you were probably deceived and sold not a Chinese keyboard))

Because it's more convenient!

because clever people did Klava

Tatyana:

because they are located on the typewriter too. Learn the ten-finger blind method according to Shahidzhanyan, and you will understand 🙂

Maksim Melnikov:

hmmm .... Nada vam zadat etat vapros v TEME Yumor. 😛

grigory faleev:

it is not convenient to type words

Rodion Kazanin:

to make it easier to type with two hands

Neighbor:

Why I don’t know. But when I studied typing, the typewriter keyboard was exactly the same.

"Z @ and [email protected]/ \\ about 8sё ":

What's the point? So to steam your brains until you learn))

Katya Megachiku:

This arrangement of letters (letters) is very convenient. The letters we most often use are located in the center of the keyboard so that they are in the range of our most developed and "working" fingers. The rest of the keys have to be pressed less often, and therefore they are located along the edges of the keyboard, in the range of weaker fingers - the ring and little fingers.

User deleted:

In the distant nineteenth century, when typewriters looked like sewing machines, the question of the location of the keys was not particularly acute. Engineering thought was occupied exclusively with the technique of reproducing letters on paper. Therefore, the simplest solution was to arrange the keys alphabetically. However, here the authors were disappointed. It turned out that the letters with the most frequent letters began to sink in godlessly, clinging to each other and significantly complicating the typing process.

And if you imagine that the text was displayed at that time on the reverse side of the sheet and it was possible to see what was printed only at the end of the work, one can easily understand why Christopher Scholes (apparently, together with his brother-mathematician) in 1868 compiled a new layout for the printed cars. Since Scholes could not have imagined that the era of mechanical typewriters would fade into oblivion faster than his own creation, he reorganized the layout so that the most frequently used letters were separated from each other as far as possible.

The principle was simple - to prevent the most frequently used letters from clinging to each other. Simply put, spread them on different sides of the keyboard, or even better, scatter them in different rows.

Type stuck issue has been resolved. Now your fingers simply do not have time to press the keys so quickly that the letters get stuck. They will have to work hard to type in common English words. This is how QWERTY was born - a layout that is still installed on 98% of computers worldwide, although there is no longer a need to "imprison" the most common letters.

Of course, QWERTY did not immediately conquer the English-speaking world. But, having conquered the world once, she is not going to leave it, although today you will not find a mechanical typewriter with fire during the day.

Significant help in promoting the new layout was the invention of the blind ten-finger method in 1876 by Frank McGarrin, a forensic stenographer, specifically for QWERTY. At that time, the ability to quickly and efficiently master the layout was a critical success factor. There was a sorely lack of typists capable of working on any layout.

Held in 1888, the competition, which ended in a convincing victory for McGarin, decided the fate of QWERTY, and along with the blind method. From that moment on, all the leading companies began to produce QWERTY typewriters, and all typists used the blind method.

The Russian analogue of QWERTY - YTsUKE, alas, is no better, since it is based on the same principles.

But why then is this layout installed on 98% of computers? The question inevitably arises: what is set on the other two percent?

The fact is that in 1936, a professor at the University of Washington, August Dvorak, decided to return to the origins of the standard layout and scientifically substantiate the need for a new one. The result of his research was a new layout bearing the name of the author. Its principle is maximum convenience for the typesetter. However, the issue of layout has long been a matter not of ergonomics but of economics. August Dvorak's research was discredited, the layout ridiculed, the results forgotten.

And although the Dvorak layout was developed according to all the rules and takes into account most of the ergonomic considerations, although it is included in the list of layouts for any version of Windows, only two percent of computer users work with it ...

Truly, habit is second nature. QWERTY is a brilliant confirmation of this.

Sergey Aldashov:

The letters are arranged for ease of typing. In the middle, the letters are used more often, the further to the edge the letters are less often used.

Valery Kolosov:

because it's a car !!!

For the convenience of the user. In the past, the entire layout on the keyboard was carefully thought out by scholars-philologists on the principle of the most frequently present, and therefore frequently pressed letters in a particular language.
Try to track the movements of your fingers while typing and you will understand that most often you use exactly those letters that are located in the center of the keyboard.

Galina Rogova:

In the center of the keyboard are the letters that are most often found in words. And so, as it is in demand, the less often the letter is in demand, the further from the middle it is

Alexey Udalov:

it seems to me that the point is not in the frequency of use, because the letters of the most frequently used Russian words - x * d and b * i are located on the edges of the keyboard))))) probably the layout was just conceived to reduce the use of these words, and this can be considered part Global Western Attack in order to destroy Russian culture, including mate)))))))))))))

The arrangement of letters on a computer keyboard is a legacy of typewriters that appeared in the 19th century.

The principle of operation of such a machine is simple. When you hit a key with a letter with your finger, a lever (hammer) with a cast matrix of this letter on top is activated. It strikes the ink-soaked tape between the paper and the hammer and thus leaves a print on the paper. When typing, hammers alternately hit the drum with paper.

The first typewriters invented by Christopher Scholes had letters on the keys in alphabetical order, in two rows... In addition, it was possible to print only in capital letters, and there were no numbers 1 and 0 at all. They were successfully replaced by the letters "I" and "O". At first, everyone was fine with it. However, over time, the speed of typing became more and more, and then such machines had a serious problem: individual hammers did not have time to return to their place and constantly interlocked with each other. Very often, attempts to separate them led to a breakdown of the machines.

And this happened because in english alphabet there are a lot of neighboring letters that are used more often than others (for example, p-r, n-o). As a result, it often happened that adjacent keys were pressed one after another, which led to grip and jamming of hammers.

Manufacturers of typewriters drew conclusions and developed a keyboard in which the letters often found in texts were placed away from the index fingers (after all, before the invention of the "blind" ten-finger method, they typed mainly with the index fingers). This is how the famous QWERTY keyboard layout (according to the first letters of the top row from left to right) appeared, which is still used today. She also migrated to computer keyboards, although the problem of clutching levers (hammers) does not exist at all.

We must admit that the arrangement of letters on the QWERTY keyboard is far from the most rational. A much more convenient layout was invented by Arthur Dvorak, professor of statistics at the University of Washington. It contains frequently used letters in the middle and upper rows. Under the left hand in the middle row are all the vowels, and under the right hand are the most frequent consonants.

The load on the arms is more balanced. Judge for yourself: in an 8-hour working day, our fingers cover a distance of about 2 km on the Dvorak keyboard, while on a traditional QWERTY keyboard the same indicator is already 7 km. Accordingly, the typing speed on the Dvorak keyboard is 2 times higher compared to the QWERTY keyboard.

What about the Russian keyboard? Why are the letters on it in this order and not otherwise? The fact is that in Russia typewriters, like all technical innovations, appeared much later than in the West. By this time, many design flaws had already been eliminated. And the Russian keyboard was originally designed as ergonomic, that is, with a convenient and rational arrangement of keys. The most commonly used letters were placed under the strongest and fastest index fingers, and the rarer ones under the weak ring and pinky fingers.

Unfortunately, the Russian computer keyboard also has disadvantages. For example, for a comma, which is used, you see, very often, they did not bother to select a separate key, but placed it on the same key on which the period is located - in upper case! Therefore, in order to print a comma, you need to press two keys. Maybe that's why modern schoolchildren who like to surf the Internet so often skip commas? ..

Every day we come across dozens of secrets. And in order to find them, it is not at all necessary to spy on someone else's personal life and fish out someone's skeletons from the closets. You just need to look around.

One of the everyday riddles is right now at your fingertips. Why are the letters on the keyboard in this strange order?
Let's try to figure it out.

Do you think you are fast typing on your keyboard? Do you make a lot of mistakes? Perhaps if the letters were in alphabetical order, things would go much more productively? This question was asked by Japanese researchers and tried to find out why, instead of the "normal" arrangement of keys, the whole world uses the QWERTY (or in the Russian version of QWERTY) layout. The documents were raised, the answers were found, and in parallel, two popular myths about the origin of the modern keyboard were debunked.

Myth 1: The QWERTY layout was designed for fast typing and due to the low "popularity" of individual letters

This version is the most widespread and quite logical. At first sight. But empirical research has shown that if subjects used exclusively a specially designed keyboard with a different lettering arrangement for some time, they became accustomed to it. And the typing speed practically did not differ from working with QWERTY.

Myth 2: the keyboard is a descendant of the typewriter, and there the QWERTY order helped to avoid "freezing"

This version was completely opposite to the first. Its essence was that the unusual and "illogical" arrangement of the keys on the typewriter should have slightly confused typists. They could not type at high speed and, accordingly, the typewriter did not freeze. And everyone was happy. But the counter-argument to an interesting theory lies on the surface: mechanical memory. As proved by the experiment from the previous paragraph. Over time, we adapt to any environment, so you can learn to type quickly and almost blindly on an "illogical" keyboard.

Truth: thanks Morse code

It turned out that the first prototypes of modern keyboards were equipped with just the same alphabetical layout. And they began to "test" them on telegraph operators. Testers who had to quickly transcribe messages found the alphabetical order annoyingly awkward. And to work with Morse code more efficiently, they offered their own version - QWERTY. The proposal was heard, and within a few years all telegraphs switched to QWERTY. And behind them is the rest of the printed world.

The habitual arrangement of keys on a computer keyboard is a legacy of typewriters. On the first of them, the letters were arranged alphabetically, in two rows. But when typing quickly, this led to the fact that the adjacent levers did not have time to return to their place and cling to each other. The keys were sticky and the typing person had to interrupt their work frequently.

The father of the QWERTY layout is the American Christopher Scholes. He decided to place the letters in the most common digraphs as far apart as possible. This kept the clutch frequency to a minimum. It took a dozen years and several dozen prototypes - two-, three-, four- and, finally, five-row machines to come to exactly this option. The final version appeared in 1878.

The cars were improved, the speed of the levers increased, the problem of clutch disappeared, but the layout remained. Moreover, it migrated to the computer keyboard.

But this does not mean that they did not try to replace it. University of Washington professor August Dvorak was convinced that the QWERTY layout could be improved. He noticed that typing frequently occurring letter combinations had to place the fingers in a rather awkward way. And to type such common words as "was" (was) and "were" (were), you have to do with your left hand.

Dvorak patented a keyboard with frequently used letters in the middle and top rows. Under the left hand, in the middle row, there were vowels, in the lower and upper ones - rare consonants. And under the right hand were the most frequent consonants.

“The Russian keyboard layout is easier for QSUKE. It was designed so that the most frequently used letters were placed under the index fingers.<…> There is also a so-called phonetic layout YAVERTY, or YAZHERTY, but it is more convenient for foreigners "

Despite the obvious convenience, the Dvorak layout did not take root, as did the other Latin layout - Colemak. There are several reasons for this. First, the need to relearn. Secondly, the need to rename the keys at least at first. Also, do not discount the habit and the fact that most keyboards are sold with a QWERTY layout. You can switch to another layout, but it takes some effort. Is it worth it if you have to work on different computers?

It is easier with the Russian keyboard layout for QSUKE. It was originally designed so that the most commonly used letters are placed under the index fingers, and those that are less common under the ring and pinky fingers.

There is also the so-called phonetic layout YAVERTY, or YAZHERTY, but it is more convenient for foreigners studying Russian. Russian letters in it are located on the same keys as Latin ones similar in phonetic sound: A-A, B-B, V-V, G-G, D-D, F-F, KK, OO, etc. True, the phonetic layout is even less common than the Dvorak and Colemak layouts.