using the best tools for the job

typing by touch

There are several conflicting theories about why Qwerty became the dominant keyboard layout in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and why it is still dominant today despite the much better layout invented by August Dvorak in 1934. This brief account will focus on the facts as I understand them.

Perhaps the most interesting is that Qwerty was not designed as a touch typing system. Christopher Scholes invented it in 1868 and sold it to the Remington Typewriter Company in 1873. Touch typing was not invented until 1876. Scholes was not even trying to arrange the keyboard so that the most used keys were hit by the strongest fingers because no-one was then using all their fingers. In his time all typists were ‘hunting and pecking' with two or three fingers.

What Scholes was trying to do was to devise a layout which enabled people to type as quickly as possible on the best typewriters then available. These typewriters, like the 1904 Remington pictured here, had the keys springing from a central core The problem was that when adjacent keys were typed rapidly they tended to stick together in mid air, so that the typist had to stop and untangle the keys.

No-one can say with certainty that Scholes invented the best keyboard layout of his day. There were several competing layouts, including one which did the obvious thing by arranging the keys in alphabetical order. But the company which bought QWERTY, Remington, made very good typewriters. Remington became the market leader and the other manufactures gradually went over to QWERTY as well.

Just why Remington became the market leader cannot be attributed  to just one factor. But it is a common feature of the history of capitalism that the free market often leads to a situation where the market is dominated by one, or two or three, very large companies. Like Gillette in razor blades, Ford and General Motors in cars, Hoover in vacuum cleaners.

History is full of examples of giant companies which become complacent, bureaucratic and unadventurous. When such companies are supplanted by a newcomer, the newspapers are full of stories about them. Everyone loves a story about giant killers. Hence the celebration of Polaroid which pioneered a new kind of camera while Kodak was so dominant that the Brownie was the generic word for a box camera. And in Britain Dyson brought out a new vacuum cleaner that challenged the Hoover.

Too little attention is paid to the fact that many big companies continue to survive and prosper. Polaroids are rarely seen today but Kodak has re-invented itself and bestrides the world in age when cameras are mostly digital.

Human beings brings with it the inevitability of death.  Corporate nature, however, offers the possibility of immortality. Furthermore it can be argued that giant companies contain the probability of immortality. Once they reach giant size they have enormous advantages. They can easily recruit the most talented employees. They can buy the best products. They can buy other companies. And their bosses are courted by governments.

Typewriting has always been dominated by such companies. In the 1930s the company which became the world leader in office machinery was IBM. It prospered hugely and not because it made a better electric typewriter than any other company. It’s founder, Tom Watson, was a salesman. But he was canny enough to recruit excellent technicians and managers.

Today the office market, as well as home computing, is dominated by Microsoft, which by any measure is that the most important and powerful monopoly in the history of capitalism. It’s founder, Bill Gates, did not set out to topple a giant. He made friends with IBM and scored his first big success when he persuaded IBM to install the Microsoft operating system on all new IBM computers.

QWERTY become dominant because Scholes allied himself with Remington. August Dvorak, the man who invented a much better keyboard layout in failed to find such an ally. Although he was a Professor of Management at Washington State University and therefore had regular contacts with managers, he was unable to get any really powerful private enterprise company to take up his invention. He had a much bigger problem than any advocate of the Dvorak keyboard today. He had to persuade a company to take the substantial risk of a big capital investment in non-standard typewriter, and much bigger investment in a marketing campaign to make it known.

Dvorak was more successful in persuading the public sector to take up his invention. He got three US states to install some Dvorak typewriters, alongside QWERTY typewriters, in state government offices. He even got the US Navy interested. But the second world war intervened and in the 1940s the US Navy decided to drop the proposal. Dvorak was not helped by the determined opposition of the typists’ trade union, which feared, in those depression years, that it’s QWERTY trained members would lose their jobs.

It is now possible for anyone to type in Dvorak thanks to an accident of typewriting history.  Although Microsoft is based in Oregon, the next state to Washington where Dvorak was invented, it did not become part of Microsoft software until 1995. By that time Microsoft had become so big and powerful it was making many enemies, including those who had been crushed by its might. The company established a new division charged with doing good works, whose brief included helping the disabled. They began looking for a way of helping people who had only one hand to use the computer keyboard. There is only one version of QWERTY but August Dvorak had produced variations for those who could only use their left hand, or their right hand. As an added bonus Windows95 also included the original Dvorak for those lucky enough to have all fingers on both hands.

Although it is easy for anyone, with one or two hands, to use Dvorak the chances of it challenging the QWERTY monopoly still seems remote. Private enterprise companies have a duty to make money for their shareholders and Dvorak engraved keyboards can only be produced at a loss, or at a price consumers are unlikely to want to pay. Governments and schools are unlikely to want to encourage Dvorak until they can see it on computer keyboards.

Neither is it likely that the public sector will want to help. Governments have many other priorities. Politicians are unlikely to see many votes in promoting Dvorak because the biggest gainers are those who have no votes. Children who have not yet been exposed to QWERTY. Individual teachers may be committed enough to teach it but no school system will adopt it until there are keyboards available on the High Street, engraved for both Dvorak and QWERTY.

So there has to be a third way. How about the charity sector, where there are philanthropists rich enough to fund and promote it.  Now what was the name of that Microsoft man who has just announced that he is going to devote the rest of his life to charitable causes?

 

 

 

Typewriters had keys springing from a central core. They tended to stick in mid air when adjacent keys were typed in rapid succession.

How it all started

This illustration reflects the spirit of the late nineteenth century. Scholes the patriarch, technical expert and inventor, sitting at a table with one of the wonderful  new printing machines. In the background a line of adoring women. They could now get well paid work, but their role was the menial job of typing into the new machine the words of others, mostly men.