QWERTY keyboard

Functions

"QWERTY" is the continuous writing of 6 letters in the upper left corner of the main keyboard letter area

The keyboards we use are all called QWERTY keyboards.

In the beginning, the keyboard of the typewriter was arranged in alphabetical order, but if the typing speed is too fast, some key combinations are prone to key problems, so Christopher Sholes (ChristopherSholes) Invented the QWERTY keyboard layout, he placed the most commonly used letters in the opposite direction, and "as much as possible to increase the typing speed without getting stuck." Thosi applied for a patent in 1868, and the first commercial typewriter using this layout was successfully put on the market in 1873.

Keyboard key design

The key design of a keyboard contains two concepts, one is the design of the English and number keys of the main body, and the other is the various auxiliary keys. design.

The most common design of English and number keys is the commonly known "QWERTY" Curty keyboard. This is a key position scheme invented by Christopher LathamSholes in 1868.

As we all know, the main design purpose of the Curty keyboard is to make the keystrokes not too fast. However, there is a small error in the statement in many articles. This is-the key design of the Curty keyboard is not to "make the keystrokes not too fast to cause jams", but to "do not get stuck." Try to increase typing speed while living.”

There is a subtle difference between these two statements. That is to say, slowing down the typing speed is not the ultimate goal. It is designed to reduce the speed on one finger, but there are also many acceleration key combinations such as ER.

In fact, the fundamental reason for this design lies in the structure of the mechanical typewriter. The structure of its type lever determines that when two types of similar positions are pressed at the same time, it will be stuck, but the two opposite Types that are far apart will not have the same problem. I believe anyone who has experience in using English typewriters will know it.

On the Curty keyboard, some commonly used letters are placed on the ring finger, little finger, etc. This has always been considered to be the inflexibility of the little finger to reduce speed, but this statement does not take into account In the actual situation of mechanical typewriters, the index finger is certainly the most flexible, but the keys on the index finger key position are also the easiest to jam, so it is natural to put commonly used letters on the edge to ensure that they will not jam during high-speed typing.

So, the ultimate purpose of designing the Curty keyboard is not to simply reduce the typing speed. In fact, the design of the Curty keyboard is precisely to increase the typing speed, but it is just Try to improve typing speed if you die."

Development

Nowadays, the qwerty keyboard is not only used in the computer 101 standard keyboard, but also many smart phones, PDAs and other portable devices have adopted this keyboard. Different from the original intention of the qwerty keyboard on the original typewriter, the typing speed of the qwerty keyboard is much faster than the traditional 0-9 numeric keyboard on a small device such as a mobile phone.

This sort of arrangement that was used to reduce typing speed a century ago has been used and has become a standard. This is a miracle.

Full keyboard scheme

In the beginning, the QWERTY keyboard was designed to reduce typing speed. Typewriter keyboards are arranged in alphabetical order, but if the typing speed is too fast, certain key combinations are easy There was a stuck key problem, so Christopher Sholes invented the QWERTY keyboard layout. He placed the most commonly used letters in the opposite direction to slow down the keystroke speed to the maximum to avoid stuck keys. Thosi applied for a patent in 1868, and the first commercial typewriter using this layout was successfully put on the market in 1873.

QWERTY Keyboard: Keyboard Arrangement

But ironically, this kind of keyboard arrangement formed 129 years ago with the purpose of slowing down keystrokes has continued to this day . In 1986, Sir Bruce Burrivan stated in the article "The Wonderful Writing Machine": "The arrangement of QWERTY is very inefficient." For example, most typists use right-handed, but using QWERTY, the left-handed burden is 57%. work. The two little fingers and the left ring finger are the weakest fingers, but they are frequently used. The use rate of the letters in the middle column only accounts for about 30% of the entire typing work. Therefore, in order to type a character, you often have to move your fingers up and down.

QWERTY keyboard: There is also the following statement

The computer keyboard evolved from the English typewriter keyboard. When it first appeared, it was based on a type called "teletypewriter". "The image of the parts appeared.

QWERTY keyboard: paper tape typewriter and card typewriter

In fact, keyboards have appeared on computer accessory equipment in the era before teletypewriters, and they can still be used on computers. In the era when a hall was occupied, the main computer input devices were punched paper tapes and punched cards. Of course, these paper tapes and cards could not be worn out by hand. They used special "paper tape punching machines" and " "Card punching machine" came out, and on both machines there is also an electric typewriter that looks like an ordinary typewriter as an input device. It's just that, relatively speaking, these two devices are not part of the computer, which is different from the teletypewriter, so we don't regard them as part of the history of computer keyboard development.

QWERTY keyboard

"Teletypewriter" is the main interactive input and output device of the computer before the keyboard + display input and output device appeared. You can think of it as a printer with a keyboard on the cover. The words and the computer output will be printed out on the printout port on the front of the keyboard.

"Teletypewriter" is the most important computer interactive input and output device in the era of large computers (MAINCOMPUTER) and small computers (SMALLCOMPUTER). After the mid-1970s, as the display design matured, the teletypewriter gradually withdrew from the computer world, and the keyboard became an independent device from getting rid of it.

During this period, due to the small size of personal computers, the popular design was to make the keyboard directly on the mainframe. The famous APPLEII series of computers have such a structure. But as IBMPC began to introduce the then huge hard disk to personal computers, in the mid-1980s, independent keyboards became the mainstream design.

Early keyboards are almost all mechanical keyboards. To be precise, they are mechanical contact type keyboards. This type of keyboard uses electrical contact contacts as a sign and a mechanical metal spring as an elastic mechanism. This kind of keyboard has a hard feel, long key stroke, quick and crisp changes in key resistance, and feels very close to a typewriter keyboard, so it was very popular at the time.

However, the two biggest shortcomings of mechanical contact keyboards are that the mechanical springs are easily damaged, and the electrical contacts will oxidize after long-term use, causing the keys to fail. So after the 1990s, mechanical touch keyboards gradually withdrew from the stage of history.

In the beginning, it was replaced by an electromagnetic mechanical keyboard. The electromagnetic mechanical keyboard is still a mechanical keyboard, but it is different from the mechanical contact keyboard in that it does not rely on mechanical force to connect two electrical contacts, but encloses the electrical contacts in a miniature potentiometer. , A magnet is placed at the bottom of the button, and the current is connected through the magnetic force.

Compared with the mechanical contact type keyboard, the electromagnetic mechanical keyboard has a much longer service life, but it still fails to solve the problem of easy damage to the mechanical movement parts inherent in the mechanical keyboard, so the electromagnetic mechanical keyboard The keyboard did not survive long on the market, and was quickly replaced by the non-contact keyboard that appeared in the late 1980s.

So non-contact keyboards are in contrast to the previous "contact keyboards". Unlike the "contact keyboards", they do not rely on the mechanical connection of conductive contacts. To get the button signal, it depends on the electrical parameter changes of the button itself to get the button signal. Since mechanical contact of the contacts is not required, its service life can be much longer.

The main non-contact keyboards are resistive keyboard and capacitive keyboard. Among them, the capacitive keyboard is more widely used because of its simpler process and lower cost. Compared with a mechanical keyboard, its two biggest features are the use of springs made of elastic rubber instead of mechanical metal springs. At the same time, the electrical connection of the mechanical keyboard is converted to the change of the distance between the bottom of the button and the two capacitive plates at the bottom of the keyboard. The capacitance change brought about to obtain the signal of the button.

Compared with the mechanical keyboard, the capacitive keyboard feel has changed a lot, becoming softer and more resilient, which is why many articles say that the current keyboard is capacitive keyboard The reason, but in fact, this kind of feel does not come from the capacitive structure but from the replacement of the mechanical metal spring by the rubber spring. This is not the reason why the capacitive keyboard is a capacitive keyboard.

Because of the principle of the capacitive keyboard, each key must be made into an independent closed structure. Such a keyboard is also classified as a "closed keyboard."

For most keyboard articles, talking about capacitive keyboard will come to an end, but in fact their mistake is also here, why? Let's sell a key here first, and then continue when we talk about the structure of the keyboard.

QWERTY keyboard: keyboard key design

The key design of a keyboard contains two concepts, one is the design of the English and number keys of the main body, and the other is various Attached key position design. The most common design scheme for English and numeric keys is the commonly known "QWERTY" Curty keyboard. This is a key position scheme invented by Christopher LathamSholes in 1868.

As we all know, the main design purpose of the Curty keyboard is to make the keystrokes not too fast. However, there is a small error in the statement in many articles. This is-the key design of the Curty keyboard is not to "make the keystrokes not too fast to cause jams", but to "do not get stuck." Try to increase typing speed while living.”

There is a subtle difference between these two statements. That is to say, slowing down the typing speed is not the ultimate goal. It is designed to reduce the speed on one finger, but there are also many acceleration key combinations such as ER.

In fact, the fundamental reason for this design lies in the structure of the mechanical typewriter. The structure of its type lever determines that when two types of similar positions are pressed at the same time, it will be stuck, but the two opposite Types that are far apart will not have the same problem. I believe anyone who has experience in using English typewriters will know it.

On the Curty keyboard, some commonly used letters are placed on the ring finger, little finger, etc. This has always been considered to be the inflexibility of the little finger to reduce speed, but this statement does not take into account In the actual situation of mechanical typewriters, the index finger is certainly the most flexible, but the keys on the index finger key position are also the easiest to jam, so it is natural to put commonly used letters on the edge to ensure that they will not jam during high-speed typing.

So, the ultimate goal of designing the Curty keyboard is not to simply reduce the typing speed. In fact, the design of the Curty keyboard is precisely to increase the typing speed, but it is just Try to improve typing speed if you die."

After entering the 20th century, the invention of the electromechanical typewriter made the lead arm of a mechanical typewriter no longer an important problem, and many high-speed typing keyboards came into being. One of the most famous is the DVORAK keyboard.

The Dvorak keyboard is a key position scheme designed by Professor August Dvorak in 1930. Since the mechanical structure of the keys is no longer considered, the key layout is completely designed in accordance with the idealized keystroke rate distribution. The stroke of finger movement is much smaller than that of the Curty keyboard, and the average typing speed has almost doubled. But like many things, the power of habit is hard to resist, and the Dvorak keyboard is only used in a few professional situations. But for those who want to try, you can try the Dvorak keyboard program that comes with Windows.

QWERTY keyboard: non-English keyboard scheme

The keyboards of various languages ​​are basically changed on the basis of the English keyboard, and most of the keys are arranged in the same way as the English keyboard The difference is not far, only some subtle differences, for example, the dollar sign on the British keyboard has become a pound sign, while the Y and Z on the German keyboard have swapped positions. The English keys of various Far East language keyboards are not much different from the non-standard American English keyboards, but there are obvious differences in some subsidiary keys. For Chinese users, the most common non-US language keyboard may be the Japanese keyboard commonly seen in the second-hand market. Compared with the standard English keyboard, most of its keys are the same, but there are some punctuation marks. However, there are obvious differences in position, which leads to the situation that the logo of the button does not correspond to the actual content when some punctuation is used in the English system.

Another concept of key design is the design of auxiliary keys. From the earliest IBMPC83 keyboard to the current mainstream 108-key Windows98 keyboard, it has been updated for several generations, but there is no fundamental change in general. . Although there are some compact designs, they are unsuccessful from the market response. It can be seen that the current keyboard key design has been tested in practice for many years and is already a very mature ideal design.

The self-defeating design of the cross arrow keys

The so-called cross-shaped arrow keys refer to the independent arrow keys on the keyboard arranged in a cross shape. This design was originally designed to improve the image It is closer to the traditional 83 keyboard design, but the actual effect is quite poor.

The earliest cross-shaped keys were used on Microsoft's first generation of ergonomic keyboards, but then they became the most scolded design on this generation of famous products. The cross-shaped keys look good. But in actual use, you will find that the fingers of this button design will be awkwardly squeezed together, which is extremely inconvenient in daily use or in games, especially in racing games. It is almost impossible to play. So Microsoft changed back to the original design in the second generation of products since then.

But it’s ridiculous that Microsoft, the original creator, doesn’t use the cross-shaped arrow keys anymore, but recently some domestic manufacturers have picked up this self-defeating design and used it as one of the characteristic designs. publicity.

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