Now with computers it’s easier than ever to learn to touch type, even if QWERTY at first seems strange. It has helped me all my life, first as a student, then in everything I have done since. After lots of practice, I could touch type. Then I found a touch-typing book and started to practise, making sure that I kept my fingers on the home keys and always used the correct finger to type each letter. I used clothes pegs to fix it to the typewriter. I made a cardboard shield to stop me seeing my fingers as I typed. When I was a teenager, I owned a typewriter. Learn how to do that quickly, without watching your fingers, and you can touch type! Type other letters by moving just one finger up or down and perhaps a little sideways. Keep your fingers resting lightly on the home keys. Your left fingers should be on ASDF and your right on JKL. Place your first fingers on those keys, and your other fingers along the same row. Now, on any keyboard, feel the F and J keys carefully and find some tiny bumps. You’ll never regret being able to touch type Ask them to show you the keyboard they use in their language. Perhaps you can find someone from India, Thailand, Japan, Korea, or China. For example, AZERTY is commonly used for French, QWERTZ for German, and QZERTY for Italian. QWERTY was developed for the English language. It seems that we are stuck with this layout, even if jams are no longer a problem. But none has proved good enough to beat QWERTY. Some are claimed to be easier to learn or faster to use than QWERTY. Many other key arrangements have been tried. Because so many people became so skilled at using QWERTY, it became very difficult to get everyone to change to any other key arrangement. They were employed to type letters and all other kinds of things for business and government. They used the QWERTY keyboard.įor 100 years or so after the Remington typewriter arrived, vast numbers of people all over the world trained to become touch typists (meaning they could type even without looking much at the keyboard). In the 1870s, that company built and sold the first commercially successful typewriters. He sold his invention to the Remington Company in the United States. (Look at the top row of a keyboard to see why it’s called QWERTY.) The best arrangement he could find was similar to the QWERTY keyboard we all use today. He tried various arrangements, always trying to reduce the need to type two keys that were close together. Rearranging the letters could reduce jams.Ĭhristopher Sholes was an American inventor who was most successful in reducing jams. Jams were most likely when the two keys were close together on the keyboard. The trouble was that if you hit two keys quickly the levers would jam. The first machine had the letter keys in alphabetical order. Press more keys and you could type a word, or even a whole book. The paper then shifted a bit to the left, so the next key would hit in just the right place next to the A. Hit the A key and the A lever would hit the paper and type A. You had to press a letter key quite hard to make the metal lever fly across and hit the paper. They had all these levers with a metal alphabet letter at the end of it. Have you ever seen the inside of a real piano? You press a key and some clever levers make a felt hammer hit just the right piano string to make a note.Įarly typewriters were similar. The first typewriters were big heavy metal machines that worked a bit like a piano. ![]() Then some clever inventors built a machine for typing. Most likely they were written using a pen that had to be dipped in ink every word or two. About 150 years ago, all letters and business papers were written by hand. And so as a grown-up, I decided to research it and write a paper about it. ![]() Great question! That question really puzzled me when I was a kid. Why are the letters on the keyboard not in alphabetical order? – Baker, age 9, Arrowtown, New Zealand.
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