Writing is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have many things that I want to bring to people’s attention. Such as; the Dvorak keyboard. 99.999 percent of you are using a keyboard that was laid out in the 1860’s by a person who was trying to develop the typewriter. His one and only concern was to try to minimize the times that keys on the same side of the keyboard would be pressed one right after another, because this could cause the machine to jam. Because his design of typewriter was more successful than any other, his keyboard layout became the standard, the QWERTY keyboard.
A scientist at the University of Washington back in the 1920’s thought that maybe this vital method of transcribing information could be improved upon, so he began a study of the English language, typing, typists, and whatever else he believed impacted the process of typing. After correlating his data for a while, he developed a new keyboard layout, which, surprisingly enough, was named after him in the 1930’s. The Dvorak keyboard is recognized by all major computer operating systems, so that changing from it to the QWERTY keyboard is quick and easy.
Finding a Dvorak keyboard is usually a little tougher, unless you live in a big city. But some keyboards can be modified into the Dvorak layout, simply by taking the key caps off of the board and putting them back in the proper configuration. There are many keyboards which cannot be reconfigured, however, because the so-called ‘home’ key caps are keyed differently than all the rest. Popping either the ‘F’ or the ‘J’ key caps off and seeing if they will fit anywhere else will tell you quickly if the keyboard can be converted. Many keyboards have key caps of varying height and tilt, so your keyboard might look like it has had an earthquake, but that doesn’t seem to adversely affect the typist, at least in my experience.
The wikipedia page on the Dvorak keyboard is at this address:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard
When typewriters ruled the office, converting to the Dvorak keyboard was an expensive process. But today, it is only a few mouse clicks away. This is a data entry device which is much superior to the QWERTY keyboard, I, and many other people, believe. The world record for typing speed was set on a Dvorak, (150 words per minute over 50 minutes,) and there is evidence that the Dvorak is less likely to induce carpal tunnel syndrome. Just because we have done something a certain way for the short time that we have been doing it does not, in my book at least, mean that we are fated to doing it that way forever.
