Home » Why are computer keyboards like this? The answer is QWERTY

Why are computer keyboards like this? The answer is QWERTY

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On June 23, 1868, the typewriter was invented in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It should be explained to younger people that once there were no computers. And we wrote on machines in which each key corresponded to a metal arm that went to print the letter associated with it by pressing the ink on a sheet. Typewriters had a great charm: they were the object that pointed to journalists, writers and secretaries.

These were the professions in which he typed. The personal computer has wiped out these objects but has retained the most important feature: the QWERTY keyboard. You have surely noticed that the keyboard of your PC, tablet or smartphone, after a first line with numbers in ascending order starting from 1, has the letters that follow an apparently random arrangement. They are not in alphabetical order, but for example the first line after the numbers starts with the six letters QWERTY. It is no coincidence but the fruit of the invention patented on June 23, 1868. It was Christopher Latham Sholes who invented it.

He was an expert editor, almost 50 years old, when he applied for a patent: he understood that following the alphabetical order on a keyboard was not good, because there are letters that we use a lot and others that do not. As a result, the mechanical arms often got stuck, forcing the writer to stop and start over.

After years of testing with his partner Amos Densmore he came to design a keyboard in which the most used letters are all far away. He was so pleased that he called his invention “a blessing to humanity” and searched for years for someone who would want to put it into production. Until in 1873 he convinced Remington to experiment with it. It was a large company that made weapons, agricultural and sewing machines. Remington bought half of Sholes’s patent for $ 12,000 (less than $ 300,000 today), while the partner who chose to be paid a percentage on the typewriters sold earned $ 1.5 million. The QWERTY keyboard over time has resisted all attempts to replace it with other criteria and the Remington was a resounding success. The first writer to use it was Mark Twain: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, in 1876, was the first novel written with a typewriter.

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(we are building day after day an Almanac of Italian innovation. Today, for example, we have not found an Italian fact to tell. To propose one, write to me at [email protected])

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