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11 August 2010 Last updated at 08:41 GMT
By Nick Baker Producer, BBC Radio 4
Look down from the screen on which you are reading this, and wonder. Q-W-E-R-T-Y. How on earth did this pattern of letters get so locked into our language?
It seems so random. Patchily alphabetic, and in places wantonly arbitrary.
Yet it is also the ultimate software - hard-wired into tens of millions of brains and hundreds of millions of fingers around the world.
It is the ultimate user-machine interface - replicated on the keyboards of computers, and some of the most sophisticated PDAs and mobile phones across the world.
Yet it is pretty much unchanged since it was standardised in the 1870s.
Why do we all use Qwerty keyboards?
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I read its supposed to be the most practical of configurations.
ReplyDeleteI learned to type back in Germany, and the keyboard is arranged a bit different there. For instance next to the l are two symbols that are unique to the German language (ö and ä). The y and the z are swapped, and other stuff is on unusual places. It took me a long time to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard. The typing instructor at school said the differences have to do with how often certain letters or signs are being used in a language.
ReplyDeleteTrudy
I must make a note to take a keyboard I'm used to before going to Germany! My french is slightly better.
ReplyDelete