Why is the keyboard not arranged in alphabetical order?

Reason: 1. Keep the keystroke speed from being too fast to avoid keyboard "key jamming"; 2. If installed in the order of ABCD, when the typist types too fast, the keyboard will not get stuck. The long rods and hammers of two adjacent letters may get stuck together, resulting in a key jam accident.

The operating environment of this tutorial: Windows 10 system, Dell G3 computer.

Shores arranges the letters out of order in order to prevent the keystroke speed from being too fast, so as to avoid the occurrence of "key jam" failure.

Reason:

At the beginning, Shores installed the keyboard alphabetical keys in alphabetical order, that is to say, the alphabetical order in the upper left corner of the keyboard was "ABCDEF" ".

But he soon discovered that when the typist typed a little faster, the long rods and hammers of two adjacent letters might get stuck together, causing a "key jam" failure.

To solve this problem, Sholes asked his brother-in-law, a mathematician and schoolteacher, for help. The mathematician suggested that he put the most commonly used letters of the English alphabet on the keyboard together. separate to avoid malfunctions.

Shores happily adopted his brother-in-law's solution, arranging the letters out of order and eventually forming a "QWERTY" layout.

Extended information

Common keyboard layout classification

1. "QWERTY" keyboard

In 1868, American typesetter Chris Christopher Latham Sholes patented the typewriter model and obtained the rights to operate it.

A few years later, he designed the keyboard layout that is still used today, the "QWERTY" keyboard.

2. "DVORAK" Keyboard

Due to the emergence of touch typing technology, the keystroke speed was enough to meet the needs of daily work. However, 60 years later (1934), a German engineer in Washington Dvorak invented a new arrangement method to enable the left and right hands to alternately type more words. This keyboard can shorten the training cycle by 1/2 and increase the average speed by 35%.

3. "MALT" keyboard

More reasonable and efficient than the DVORAK keyboard is the MALT keyboard invented by Lillian Malt.

The MALT keyboard changes the original staggered rows of keys and allows more thumb use, making the "Backspace" key and other keys that are originally far away from the center of the keyboard easier to reach.

However, MALT keyboards require special hardware to be installed on computers, so they are not widely used.

For more computer-related knowledge, please visit the FAQ column!

The above is the detailed content of Why is the keyboard not arranged in alphabetical order?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!