QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?])

[Ben Finney]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> writes:

> [The QWERTY keyboard layout] was a sane design -- for early mechanical
> typewrites. It fulfills its goal of slowing down a typist to reduce
> jamming print-heads at the platen.

This is an often-repeated myth, with citations back as far as the 1970s.
It is false.

The design is intended to reduce jamming the print heads together, but
the goal of this is not to reduce speed, but to enable *fast* typing.

It aims to maximise the frequency in which (English-language) text has
consecutive letters alternating either side of the middle of the
keyboard. This should thus reduce collisions of nearby heads — and hence
*increase* the effective typing speed that can be achieved on such a
mechanical typewriter.

The degree to which this maximum was achieved is arguable. Certainly the
relevance to keyboards today, with no connection from the layout to
whether print heads will jam, is negligible.

What is not arguable is that there is no evidence the design had any
intention of *slowing* typists in any way. Quite the opposite, in fact.

<URL:http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/221/was-the-qwerty-keyboard-purposely-designed-to-slow-typists>,
and other links from the Wikipedia article
<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#History_and_purposes>, should
allow interested people to get the facts right on this canard.

-- 
 \     “I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in |
  `\   my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.” —Emo Philips |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney