From a single computer to tens of thousands of computers and servers. Mosey by e MC protects data and files with the most trusted cloud backup service for business. Visit Mosey dot com to learn more. That's m o z Y dot com. Mosey It's always there. Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com where smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, why are the keys arranged the way they are on a quirty keyboard? In eighteen seventy four, Remington and Sons manufactured the first
commercial typewriter, called the Remington Number one. This typewriter was designed by Christopher Scholz and used the quirty keyboard we are all familiar with. This early typewriter used a mechanism with characters on the end of a bar. When a key was struck, a link would swing the bar into a tape coated with ink. When the character struck the tape, the impression of the character was transferred onto the paper,
which was positioned behind the tape. Shul's original prototypes had a problem with the bars colliding with each other and jamming, so the story goes that he arranged the keys with the most common letters in hard to reach spots to slow type is down and try to avoid this problem. It might seem odd that the keyboard layout that we're using today, over a hundred years later, would be originally designed for inefficiency, but nonetheless that seems to be the case.
Whatever the reason for the quarty layout, it seems pretty unlikely that one of the first keyboard layouts invented would be perfect, no matter what it looked like. The Corty keyboard is therefore very different from the divorat keyboard, which is trying to be super efficient. The divorat keyboard layout tries to minimize the distance traveled by the fingers. It also tries to make the typeest alternate hands on consecutive
letters as often as possible. The divorc lagout places all of the most commonly used letters in the home rows so that your fingers don't have to move at all to hit these keys. The left hand has all the vowels and some consonants, and the right hand has only consonants, so there are very few words in the English language that can be typed with only one hand on the divorate keyboard. To our papaya and opaque. Both Pumpkin and minimum can be typed with one hand on a Quarty keyboard.
Give it a try. You can find websites that show the layout of the divorate keyboard and measure finger distances. For example, if I had typed this article on a divorate keyboard, my fingers would have traveled about thirty meters versus the fifty four meters they traveled on a Quarty key board that I used when I type this. Some argue, however, that the divorat keyboard is no more efficient than a
Quarty keyboard. An independent study in nineteen fifty six showed that Quarty type is and Divorac type has had about the same rate of speed, and continued studies since then don't show a clear winner between the two. This may explain why Corty is still the standard. If you want to see for yourself, you can switch your keyboard to a divorc configuration just by changing a setting on your
computer's operating system. Depending on your keyboard, you may even be able to pry off the keys and rearrange them into the Divorac layout. Give it a try sometimes. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff block
on the how stuff works dot com home page. Protect your organization's critical files with Mosey by E m C, the most trusted name in cloud back up. Don't leave the security of your business critical files to anyone but Mosey by E m C. Visit Mosey dot com or ask your I T provider for Mosey cloud backup. That's m o z y dot com.