History of the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard
The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout is an arrangement of letters on the keyboard you can choose in the control panel of almost every current computer. It is a vastly more comfortable and efficient than the standard “QWERTY” pattern, which arose from the design of the first mechanical typewriters.
Origins
This sixty-year-old movie was a demonstration to the U.S. Navy of the speed and accuracy benefits of the Dvorak keyboard layout.
Christopher Sholes, who invented the typewriter around 1870, developed the QWERTY layout because of a mechanical problem. His early typewriter design had the letters in alphabetical order but because it didn’t have return springs on the type slugs it was slower than typists’ fingers and the machine kept jamming.
To correct this problem, Sholes spread the most common letters—E, T, O, A, N, I—all over the board so that frequent combinations such as “ed” had to be struck by the same finger. The QWERTY keyboard slowed typing down enough so that the machine would not jam. No thought was given to ergonomics, typing speed, or efficiency.
Dr. August Dvorak, a professor at the University of Washington and a disciple of time and motion study experts Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, received two Carnegie Corporation grants to study the nature of typewriting. He judged the efficiency of typing by the Gilbreth’s principles of simple motion, short movement and rhythmic sequence and found that the QWERTY arrangement was actually considerably worse than a random arrangement!
In 1936, Dr. Dvorak and William Dealey, his brother-in-law, patented the “Simplified Keyboard,” now commonly known as the Dvorak layout. After years of studying typing behavior and letter frequency, their design laid out the letters in an optimal arrangement to make typing easier, faster, and more efficient.
Why didn’t it catch on?
Although the Dvorak layout is the only other keyboard layout registered with ANSI and is provided with all major computer operating systems, attempts to convert everyone to the Dvorak layout have not been successful.
Dr. Dvorak released his keyboard layout in 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression. Although typewriter companies began producing Dvorak typewriters, the tough economic times meant few people were able to purchase the new machines. Dvorak was not helped by the determined opposition of the typists’ trade union, which feared, in those depression years, that their QWERTY-trained members would lose their jobs.
The most famous comparison study of QWERTY vs. Dvorak occurred during World War II, when the U.S. Navy retrained one group of QWERTY typists on the Dvorak while giving a control group refresher training on the QWERTY keyboard. Both groups increased their speed, but the Dvorak group’s rate of increase was 70 percent greater. The Navy study found that the increased efficiency obtained with Dvorak would amortize the cost of retraining a group of typists within ten days of their subsequent full-time employment. They ordered 2,000 Dvorak typewriters, but a conservative Treasury official vetoed the purchase order.
By the end of the World War II, QWERTY was the standard keyboard. People learned QWERTY because offices where they might be employed had only QWERTY typewriters. Companies only bought QWERTY typewriters because the majority of typists only typed QWERTY. Like how the inferior VHS standard beat out BetaMax, it’s a classic case of path dependence.
Over the last few decades, an increasing number of individuals have switched to Dvorak as computers have made switching easier, but society as a whole is still locked in to the inferior QWERTY layout.
Switching layouts in the computer age
Fortunately, there is little to prevent you from capitalizing on the increased efficiency, speed, and comfort of the Dvorak keyboard. You can switch your keyboard layout to Dvorak with a simple change in your computer’s control panel. Switching between Dvorak and QWERTY can be done with a simple shortcut key or a click in the menu on a PC or Mac.
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