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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All in all, the article needed much more research – quite a few mistakes are pretty apparent (Apple 1 wasn‘t “the first TV Typewriter”, Remington No. 2 came out much earlier than touch typing) – and makes quite a few leaps just for, I assume, a clickbaity conclusion or title. :·/
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The truth, as it often is, is murky and disappointing, and doesn’t succumb to our desires for easy answers and nicely quotable outcomes.
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QWERTY was thoughtfully solving a technological problem (but one that ceased to exist soon afterwards), Remington had a great sales force that helped get it ahead (but perhaps would not have been enough without the design)…
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…QWERTY was born before touch typing (but was – accidentally? – great for touch typing), touch typing itself was overrated anyway (but we only realized decades later), and the TYPEWRITER gimmick was real (but not the only reason).
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All in all, it wasn’t one single thing that made QWERTY survive. It was a bunch of things coming together: some thoughtfulness, some randomness, some great design, some bad design, some cunning, and some dumb luck.
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It’s really hard to know what to think. Sometimes I can’t help but look at QWERTY in awe – it was so good it survived 150 years of assassination attempts!
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Some other days, I can imagine Sholes in a bike accident or falling in love, slowing his efforts by just a few years – and the entire future of keyboard would’ve likely gone in a very different direction. Sorry.
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End of conversation
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