For those who don't know, the Dvorak keyboard was a layout designed to speed up typing on typewriter keyboards. The traditional QWERTY keyboard is actually the "Sholes" keyboard which was patented for it's ability to slow down the typist and make them pound the keys harder. This was a good thing back in the original days of typewriters when the keys used weights and gravity to drop the key down after it had been pressed. If a typist got too fast, they would jam the keys and productivity would be lost.
In 1936, August Dvorak wondered if it would be possible to make typing faster now that typewriters were more sophisticated, by then typewriters had springs to make them return much faster. In addition, some of the earliest electric typewriters were coming out. Dvorak put the most frequently used keys such as vowels (aoeui) on the left hand home row. Then the most frequently used consonants (dhtns) on the right row. The most frequently used punctuation is above the left hand home row, and the next most frequently used consonants (fgcrl) are above the right home row.
Unfortunately, Dvorak was a bit too successful in is effort and the keyboard was very efficient and easy to learn. So easy to learn in fact, that people only needed to practice for about 8 hours with no formal training, typing standard text phrases and typing their thoughts, and within 40 hours, they were typing as fast as most typists who had studied typing for an entire year.
Dvorak entered his students into typing competitions and the typing schools threatened companies like Remington that they would endorse competitor products if they implemented the Dvorak keyboard on their typewriters. As a result, the idea languished in obscurity for about 2 decades. Companies like IBM offered a Dvorak keyboard layout for the Selectric by replacing the ball. Still, the new keyboard faced stiff opposition from typing schools and instructors.
Computers changed things significantly. When the telephone companies needed to speed up directory assistance, one of the things they did was to use the Dvorak keyboard. Originally, this was to avoid higher union rates of skilled typists, but soon the Dvorak typists were so fast and so easily trained that the keyboard stuck. During a strike, secretaries and management had to do directory assistance. For the first day, they hated the new keyboard and wanted to switch them to standard Sholes layout, but by the end of the third day, they liked it so much that when the strike was over a few weeks later, the relief staff wanted the Dvorak keyboard on their office typewriters and terminals. Several CRT terminals could be programmed to use Dvorak.
When Apple came out with the Apple IIc portable computer, there was a switch on the bottom that let you switch from Sholes to Dvorak and one of their ads included an endorsement from the world's fastest typist who set a new world record of over 200 words per minute using the Apple IIc with Dvorak keyboard. After that, Apple provided a Dvorak setting on their Mac, and Windows offered Dvorak as a "Language". Unix workstations also offered a setting or mapping to Dvorak that could be set with a script.
The United States Navy had been struggling with transcribing data from paper and proprietary computer systems into systems that could be used to communicate more effectively (Unix), and as a result, they taught many of their teletype and data entry people to use Dvorak and the navy claimed a substantial improvement in productivity.
Although there is anecdotal evidence that using the Dvorak keyboard on a laptop style keyboard can help reduce repetitive stress injuries such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, the keyboard itself can't be patented so no one is willing to fund the FDA field trials required to make such a claim officially.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram