QWERTY. What do those letters mean to you? The next time you sit down at a computer, look at the keyboard. You will find these six letters lined up on the left side of the top row of letters. You will also see that many of the alphabet's most commonly used letters-such as e,i, and o-can only be typed by moving your fingers away from the center row, which is where your fingers naturally fall. (1) The QWERTY keyboard indisputably lacks efficiency. (2) Did we get duped into using it?
Today, typing is usually faster than writing by hand.
(3) We could infer from this that our current keyboard design was created to maximize speed. (4) But this would be a fallacy. In fact, the keyboard was designed to be slow!
Originally, the typewriter was invented to provide readable, standardized print, not to increase the speed of writing. In the late 1860s, Christopher Sholes invented the first commercial typewriter. There was a problem, though: The typewriter keys tended to jam when people typed too fast. So Sholes arranged a keyboard so that letters commonly typed together, such as th and sh, could not be hit at the same time. Thus, the QWERTY arrangement was born.
However, as typewriter design improved, keys stopped jamming. (5) In today's world, it is easy to refute the claim that the QWERTY keyboard arrangement is the best one. So why is it still in use?
The answer lies, at least in part, in a contest that took place in 1888.
Mrs. L. V. Longley, head of a Cincinnati typing school, sponsored a race between her star pupil, Frank McGurrin, and rival typist, Louis Taub.
(6) Mrs. Longley had developed a ten-finger typing method based on the QWERTY keyboard, and she became an apologist for the arrangement. McGurrin used a QWERTY keyboard; Taub did not. (7) In a highly publicized event, McGurrin soundly defeated Taub, substantiating the superiority of the QWERTY arrangement in the eyes of the public. (8) The truth is, however, that the contest was something of a red herring. The superiority of McGurrin's typing was probably a result of the "touch-typing" system he had developed, which enabled him to type without looking at the keys.
Whatever its history, there is still strong resistance to changing the QWERTY keyboard. One reason is that most people are used to this keyboard. Those who already know how to type do not want to have to relearn this skill to accommodate a new arrangement. Also, companies that produce keyboards have a considerable financial investment in the current letter positions.
(9) Not everyone has been dissuaded from trying to improve this keyboard design, however. Dr. Anton Dvorak patented a keyboard that puts all of the vowels on the line where we usually place our fingers. In one experiment, he found that a person's fingers traveled only one mile during a typical day's typing on his keyboard. In contrast, a person's fingers traveled at least sixteen miles when typing on the QWERTY keyboard. (10) These results imply that the Dvorak arrangement is superior.
So the next time your fingers are tired from keyboarding, think of Dr. Dvorak. Perhaps someday his arrangement will give those fingers a rest.
Each sentence below refers to a numbered sentence in the passage. Write the letter of the choice that gives the sentence a meaning that is closest to the original sentence.
These results that the Dvorak arrangement is superior.
a. reason
b. prove
c. suggest
d. conclude
