The good news:
Most or all of your competitors use a keyboard layout that's been obsolete for over 100 years; a layout designed before touch-typing was invented; a layout that is slower and significantly more stressful than the alternative, improved layout that is probably built into their computers!
The bad news:
Odds are, so do you!
What can you do to take advantage of this situation?
Like a lot of people, I learned typing in a room full of IBM Selectrics with the familiar letters QWERTY in the upper row of keys. My best speed in that course was 25 words per minute. (I usually blame my stubby fingers.)
After years typing, I wasn't much faster. Then I switched to the Dvorak keyboard pattern. In less than a month I was as fast on Dvorak as on QWERTY, and soon I averaged at least twice as fast.
The Dvorak pattern has been around for 60 years, so why doesn't everyone use it? Ignorance, inertia, and fear. Few people have heard about the Dvorak keyboard. Those who have are not always convinced it is good enough to warrant switching. And even if you believe you can type faster on Dvorak, change is scary! The world is full of employers with QWERTY equipment who don't want to hear about something better, no matter how much better it is.
So why did I change? I got mad! It hurts me to type on QWERTY--not just physically, but by making me wait for the words to come out. Like I said, I've got stubby fingers. When I heard the story that QWERTY was designed to slow me down, it made me angry! That story is controversial, but it is still easy to show that QWERTY is a bad design. My experience with Dvorak makes me glad I switched when I found a way.
Until recently, it took a lot of effort for me to stay with Dvorak. Dvorak is easier to use, but every time I changed computer types I had to either go back to QWERTY or find a way to remap the keyboard. Going back hurts--literally. But asking someone for help remapping your keyboard is a good way to fish for blank stares!
Now, thanks to some recent software and the educating influence of the Internet, you can easily set up the Dvorak keymap on just about any personal computer.
In the 1920's and 30s, August Dvorak and William Dealey designed the "simplified" keyboard now known by Dvorak's name. They did so to thwart a conspiracy of ignorance that started 60 years before.
Then, as today, most keyboards used a standard layout called QWERTY (a name taken from its upper row of letters). There are conflicting claims about how this keyboard came into being. The best sources I have seen to date are Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and The Dvorak Keyboard by R. C. Cassingham. Other sources I've seen largely agree. I want to do more research, but I think the following summary is pretty accurate:
In the late 1860s, A fellow named C. L. Sholes and some friends invented the first practical typewriter. The machine jammed easily, and jams were hard to clear, so Sholes arranged the keys to avoid sequences that caused jams. His exact method is debatable, but certainly his motive was to prevent jams rather than promote fast keystrokes. His result was virtually the same QWERTY keyboard we know today.
Remington (the gun company) began manufacturing typewriters based on Sholes' design, and QWERTY, in 1873. The only competitors at the time were "index" typing machines that didn't have keyboards at all. Recent note has been made of QWERTY's later wins in competition with another keyboard pattern, the Caligraph. But the losing pattern, an awkward-looking monster with about twice as many keys, was at heart similar to QWERTY.
Its early history notwithstanding, nobody can claim QWERTY had any ergonomically-designed competition before typists and typing instructors had universally adopted it. After all, the science of motion study (forerunner of ergonomics) was developed years later!
(I have heard of a possible exception called the "Ideal," but I know almost nothing about it. The Caligraph type seems to have put up a longer fight. More later, I hope.)
Yet there is a strong tendency for people to believe QWERTY's bizarre layout must have been arrived at scientifically, with efficiency in mind. No doubt, at the time it was a useful compromise, but it is easy to show that QWERTY is not efficient.
In the teens, '20s, and '30s, several researchers in the budding field of motion study (pioneered by Drs. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth) found flaws in the QWERTY layout. Even Sholes himself had seen problems, and patented a layout somewhat more logical than his original QWERTY. Dvorak and Dealey built upon earlier research as well as their own, using extensive studies of letter frequency and especially groupings in English to craft their "simplified" keyboard. On this simplified keyboard, they found, fingers need only travel 1 mile to do a typical day's typing; on QWERTY, fingers travel 16 to 20 miles to do the same work!
But now, after 60-odd years, Dvorak's efforts languish in obscurity. Attempts to adopt the Dvorak pattern have met many obstacles: a Great Depression, a World War, a huge installed base of difficult-to-convert typewriters, typists, and training material, and at least one bogus "study" that claimed Dvorak isn't so hot.
In the last decade or so, the Dvorak keymap has even been sucked into an academic debate about economic theory. Some very hot issues are at stake, and Dvorak is caught in the middle. Fortunately, the academic evaluation of Dvorak doesn't matter so much any more; big money is no longer the issue. Most personal computers now have switchable keymaps, and although the feature is probably geared towards the international market, a Dvorak layout is usually included or freely available. Odds are, it will be cheap and easy for you to try Dvorak for yourself!
Back to Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard.
Marcus Brooks -- 3 April 1997