2. Key to the Past
• The last few episodes brought up a fascinating aspect of HIS-tory
that covers the roots of one of the most common IT devices:
• MedTakes simple but brilliant idea
of removing the keys on the
standard “QWERTY” keyboard in
lieu of pre-printed menu names RNs
would instantly recognize, like
“Temp,” “Pulse,” and “Resp”
• Jack Tramiel’s roots at Commodore
starting with the repair and
manufacture of typewriters, which
were also the earliest product of
NCR whose revolutionary PNUT was
a breakthrough bedside device.
3. Queer sequence: why “QWERTY?”
• This story concerns the millions keyboards that every computer
user today has to master to enter even the most basic data.
• Take a look at yours right now: the top row = “QWERTYUIOP”
– But why? Why not some other arrangement, like the order
of the alphabet itself”
“ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ?”
– Wouldn’t that make more sense to help find the right key?
– Indeed, try typing the letters of the alphabet in their usual
order and you’ll notice whole groups of them are grouped:
• “FGH” and “JKL” for example, right in the center row…• If you’re as proud of our IT industry as I am,
you might be equally ashamed as I am when
you learn just why the keys are arranged in
the seemingly meaningless sequence of our
oh-so-modern QWERTY keyboard…
4. Digital Diaspora
• This story goes back to the middle decades of nineteenth
century when there were a number of attempts to replace the
mostly male scribes or copyists with a more modern machine.
• Check out some of these amazing early versions of typewriters:
1852
1870
Wood!
5. A Truly Scientific American!
• Christopher Latham Sholes, a retired newspaper editor, was
inspired by an article in Scientific American in 1867 to invent
and take out a series of patents on a new style of typewriter.
• Prior to Shole’s machine, none of the devices
on the previous page could come near the
roughly 25 words per minute of a human
scribe, although granted, they were far more
legible.
• In a brilliant display of marketing genius, he
typed letters of introduction to dozens of
financiers, and one named James Densmore of
Pennsylvania read the letter and bought in!
• Over the next 3-4 years, Densmore’s money
enabled Sholes to perfect his typewriter,
pictured on the right, which was launched in:
1874
6. Brother, Can You Spare an Idea?
• Big problem encountered with these early “type-writers” (sic)
was speed: whenever a typist approached the 25 word-per-
minute speed of a clerk, adjacent keys in the early alphabetic
order keyboards jammed, such as “ABC” and “DEF”
– So Sholes turned to James Densmore’s brother Amos, who
had done a study of letter pair frequency: simply move the
A, B and C letters to be far away from each other, and even
the fastest typist couldn’t jam them now!
• So check out your keyboard: look how
far these first 3 letters are from each
other! Also note how J & K (among the
least used letters) are right under your
index fingers. And 50% of the most
typed letters are way on the top row!
Sholes patented this QWERTY sequence
of letters, and the rest is HIS-tory!
7. Progress!?
• So, to this day, we struggle to hit “E,” the most common letter of
English way up on the highest row under our left ring finger.
• And “A” way over on the extreme left under our left pinky… Make
sense? It did in the 1870s, but surely we “moderns” would correct
this silly sequence when we invented computers, wouldn’t we?
• In 1936, Dr. August Dvorjak pictured on right (and
unrelated to Epic’s COO!) studied the adjacent letter
problem, and came up with a keyboard layout he
claimed was 74% faster by grouping common letters.
• So didn’t we moderns all switch to this new keyboard?
• You can buy one for your PC today,
but will you? I doubt it, for the same
reason all 5,000 US hospitals use MS
Windows terminal devices rather than
the far more user-friendly Mac OS…
