Last Week's Fascination: The Dvorak Keyboard

I can't remember what triggered it, but sometime last week I thought to myself "I wonder what the deal is with inefficient keyboards?". Keyboards in the data entry sense - not the musical. I knew there was an efficiency issue, because it always seems to come up as a classic example whenever social inertia with regard to technology is discussed. The story being, of course, that current keyboard designs are inefficient, a better one was once developed, and that it has been ignored simply because the standard was already set.

A quick net search turned up a name: Dvorak. The efficient keyboard design is the Dvorak keyboard. I soon happened across the home page of Dvorak International, which sounds like a pretty impressive organization, until you realize the sad truth is that it's the passion of a single man with a website - like so much of the web. All the same, he's done his homework, and the site has lots of good information. More importantly, it also has links to other Dvorak sites.

It turns out that, in summary, the story goes something like this... In the late 1800's, the advent of the typing machine necessitated the design of a data entry interface. Several designs were proposed, but best of them was the QWERTY keyboard and some derivatives thereof. Why the QWERTY layout? It's not the most efficient design from a typists perspective - the most commonly used letters are scattered all over the place. Apparently the mechanical design of the early typing machines was such that the levers that imprinted the letters would likely jam if adjacent keys were hit in rapid succession. Thus, it was designed specifically so that the most common letters would not sit next to each other. Eventually, these mechanical problems were solved, but the keyboard layout remained. Enter Dvorak.

Dvorak was a mechanical engineer by profession, and somewhere around the 1930's he got it in his head to design a better keyboard. He carefully studied both the english language and the motion of the human hand in order to create a keyboard that required the minimum of effort on behalf of the typist. Shortly afterwards, his layout was pitted against the QWERTY design to determine which was more efficient - from the perspective of productivity. Unfortunately, the debate got personal, the trials got illogical, and the QWERTY keyboard retained its dominance. Whether the Dvorak layout allows faster typing still remains to be proven.

However, the claim that the Dvorak keyboard is less effort to type on is generally accepted, and would certainly be logical. Considering that the QWERTY layout is designed to make keys harder to reach, a layout designed for ease of typing would certainly seem more likely to be most efficient.

Where does that leave us? The Dvorak debate reared its head again in the mid 90's, at which point Discover magazine published an article by Jared Diamond (coincidence, I swear!) extolling the virtues of the Dvorak keyboard. QWERTY, however, is still the format taught in schools, and is the layout your keyboard will be if you buy a new computer. That's not to say you can't switch to the Dvorak layout if you choose - MS Windows allows you to change to Dvorak in the Keyboard settings. You can also buy hardwired Dvorak keyboards. I myself haven't decided what to do. I've typed QWERTY all my life, and I doubt that my future employers are likely to switch to Dvorak for my sake. On the other hand, I'm a sucker for solutions that reduce the stress in my life. Maybe I'll just buy some stickers and try it out some time.