When I heard @BrianRoemmele explain this theory on a recent podcast it blew my mind.
Why QWERTY? So typewriter salesmen could type T-Y-P-E-W-R-I-T-E-R impressively fast in front of prospective buyers to sell more typewriters!!https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1167061733124362240 …
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Replying to @chrismessina @BrianRoemmele
really
@mwichary2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @jordannovet @chrismessina
Not entirely. This article covers a bunch of good stuff, but has multiple problems in many crucial areas, too.
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Yes, Prof. Neil Kay in his paper mathematically analyzed the likelihood of TYPEWRITER in one row being an accident, and he believed that it almost certainly wasn’t.
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It is also true that Remington has had an immense and cunning sales force, and the success of QWERTY can be largely attributed to that.
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However, this article has very few footnotes – and the only one supporting evidence of the TYPEWRITER story is a pop science paper/book by Stephan Jay Gould – in which the anecdote itself is quoted as “perhaps apocryphal.”
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To jump from this to “TYPEWRITER in one row is the only reason the QWERTY is the way it is” is a really looooooong stretch.
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Neil Kay and other people independently analyzed QWERTY alongside the mechanical principles of the typewriter, and showed how QWERTY was actually a very thoughtful and intentional design.
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The mechanical principles of how the typewriter was built is where the above article seems pretty confused (E and R next to each other as keys doesn’t mean E and R next to each other as typebars).
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Likewise, touch typing is not necessary to attain high speeds; you can go pretty fast with hunt and pecking, too. Even before touch typing, there is evidence that the early typewriter was marketed to telegrapher operators that needed to match the existing telegraphy speeds.
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Those speeds were high enough that typebar clashing would’ve been a problem from day one.
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The author also writes “the fact is it was very easy to cause keys to lock up for most of the history of the typewriter up until the IBM selectric ball system.”
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This ignores that the typebar clashing would’ve been much more damaging in early typewriters, where the keys were not spring-loaded but fell by gravity, and not seeing what you wrote would make mistakes much more damaging.
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