Wednesday Reflection

Well, I'm bored at work and I figured what better way to spend a few minutes than to impart random knowledge on you, dear reader. By the way, I'm sorry I called you an idiot before. So here is what I learned on the bus yesterday. It has to do with an amazing feat of anti-engineering. Have you ever wondered why QWERTY keyboards are set up so crazy? Me neither, but the answer is kind of interesting. Turns out...back in the day when typewriters were first invented, they had those metal arms with the letters on them that would swing up and punch the paper to print that given letter onto it. The very first keyboards were laid out alphabetically but the problem was that a lot of the letters that were used frequently happened to be situated directly next to each other. When people got proficient at typing, they would strike the keys so fast that the metal arms would get jammed together. So, someone got the idea of spreading out the most frequently used keys to make it harder for people to type fast. They also decided to put the most frequently used ones on the left side of the board to make it even more difficult for the majority of typists who were right handed. So, there you have it. The guy that anti-engineered the keyboard was actually trying to make it as difficult as possible to type on it so that the typewriter wouldn't jam. I also read that if the keyboard were laid out efficiently, we would be able to type 75% faster. Reflect on that.