Why is the keyboard QWERT instead of ABCDE?

In this case, you don't need to take the time to remember the position of each letter key. This question should be answered by the person who first invented the keyboard. You may not know that the history of keyboard is much earlier than that of computer. Although the world's first computer appeared in the 1940s, small computers for personal use did not appear until the 1970s, and keyboards, as a part of modern computers, appeared in the 1970s. The keyboard first appeared on the mechanical typewriter invented by American Christopher latham Shoals in 1868. With the advent of the world's first commercial mechanical typewriter, people bid farewell to the era of "movable type printing" completely. At that time, "this magical machine can print letters neatly and accurately on parchment", which immediately attracted many factories to buy patents for production, and also attracted a large number of government and company employees to buy and use them.

At first, the keyboard distribution of this typewriter was arranged in the order of ABCDEFGHIJ, but there were problems in actual operation. You may wonder if this arrangement is not conducive to improving typing speed? On the contrary, this arrangement of typing speed is too fast! Limited by the mechanical equipment at that time, if the typist typed too fast, the keys adjacent to the typewriter would collide and get stuck. So Christopher Latham Sholes improved his invention, artificially slowed down the input speed of some commonly used letters, and designed the QWERT keyboard, which is the keyboard we use now.

Later, the design level of typewriters was improved, and the phenomenon of jamming almost no longer appeared. By the middle of the 20th century, the electronic keyboard replaced the mechanical keyboard, and the fear that the input speed was too fast was completely unfounded. QWERT keyboard design is meaningless. In fact, many studies have found that QWERT keyboard may be one of the worst inventions in human history, with many defects. First of all, the frequency of English 26 letters in practice is different. The most common letter E appears as high as 12.702%, and the letter T also has 9.056%. In contrast, the frequency of the letter Q is only 0.095%, and the least Z is only 0.074%. According to the fingering of keyboard typing, among the three lines of the keyboard, the middle line is the main line, so try to put the letters with high frequency (such as E, T, A, O, I) in the middle line. But the reality is that the QWERT keyboard is designed to deliberately slow down the input speed of these keys, which are scattered in the upper, middle and lower lines. When we type, we must keep moving our hands up and down. Some people have done statistics, using QWERTY keyboard, a skilled typist can move his fingers 25.7 kilometers in 8 hours, and he is exhausted at the end of the day. Unusual letters J and K (fourth and fifth from the bottom) occupy two positions in the main line, while common letters M and N are set in inconspicuous positions on the bottom line. Judging from the workload of the left and right hands, the keyboard we usually use is unfair to the left hand. According to statistics, 57% of keystrokes are done with the left hand, and most people are not left-handed. Some commonly used words, such as was, extra, etc., have to be completed completely with the left hand, which makes the typist's right hand very busy, but his left hand becomes a "drudgery". According to the workload statistics of each hand and finger, it is also unreasonable and does not match the strength and flexibility of fingers. For example, the thin and inflexible little finger is often bullied and bears too much load. It seems that the QWERT keyboard is a "tragic" keyboard design. 1936 dvorak invented a new keyboard based on the above research. On this keyboard, we can see that in the main line, AOEUIDHTNS is at the top of the letter frequency usage table, while those letters in the bottom line are used less. According to dvorak's explanation, 70% of the keys can be completed only by the main line, another 22% are on the top line, and only 8% are on the bottom line, so that fingers can not always switch up and down, which is in line with people's normal habits. Dvorak keyboard can also make the distribution of tasks between the right hand and fingers more fair. The average use time of the right hand is longer than that of the left hand, so there is no longer left-handed phenomenon. In 1970s, an inventor named Lilian Malt further improved the Dvorak keyboard, not only considering the arrangement of letters, but also making the keyboard into an arc, which is divided into two parts, left and right, and controlled by two hands respectively. This design can make the typist keep a comfortable posture when typing, and his wrist is not easy to be sore and injured. Although Dvorak keyboard and malt keyboard are better than QWERTY keyboard in terms of easy learning, input speed and health care. At that time, many people optimistically predicted that they would have great development potential and will soon replace the existing keyboards, but the actual situation is that up to now, the keyboards that beat in front of the computer are still QWERTY keyboards, DVORAK keyboards and Malt keyboards "but he was dead before he conquered", and these keyboards have never entered the market.