Fun piece of trivia: The letters that spell typewriter all lie on the top row of the QWERTY keyboard.
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Fun piece of trivia: The letters that spell typewriter all lie on the top row of the QWERTY keyboard.
Although the origin story may not be true.
"In 1867 a typewriter pioneer first set up the QWERTY arrangement so his salesman could peck out the word typewriter quickly and easily."
Qwerty
Today, let's evolve a typewriter keyboard. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. My journalist father used to work at his iron typewriter. His two index fingers moved like pistons. You could call it hunt and peck. But it was more like a panzer attack on the keys.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity (engines.egr.uh.edu)
"Apocryphal claims that this change was made to let salesmen impress customers by pecking out the brand name "TYPE WRITER QUOTE" from one keyboard row is not formally substantiated."
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@stefan The layout was designed to slow the typists down so they wouldn't jam up the keys. The Dvorak keyboard allows you to type 3 times faster but it would require retraining millions of people.
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@anubis2814 Yep, that's the explanation I've heard.
Still, this might just be a neat easter egg!
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@stefan If you're interested in a bit more on the QWERTY keyboard, we talked about it and Paul David's 1985 Paper "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY" back in 2023 on the podcast. You can listen to it here: https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/episodes/13692165-implausipod-e0015-eee-embrace-extend-extinguish #economics #podcast
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@drimplausible Nice, thank you, I'll check this out!