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Also make sure that you remember to list your courses in the open content distance learning database at Globewide Network Academy (http://www.gnacademy.org

Anyway, on to the fun part: Demolishing the myths. The Dvorak keyboard may indeed be more "logical" than QWERTY, but it doesn't seem anybody can actually cite any well-controlled, objective studies that demonstrate superior performance. Most of the early claims of its alleged superiority were provided by none other than the keyboard designer (and patent-holder -- no economic self-interest there!) August Dvorak himself.

Here is an article by two economists that rather thoroughly demolishes the claimed superiority of Dvorak. Discussing the results of one controlled comparison test:

In the first phase of Strong's experiment ten government typists were retrained on the Dvorak keyboard. It took well over twenty-five days of four-hour-a-day training for these typists to catch up to their old Qwerty speed. (Compare this to the claim David makes about the Navy study's results that the full retraining costs were recovered in ten days.) When the typists had finally caught up to their old speed Strong began the second phase of the experiment. The newly trained Dvorak typists continued training and a group of ten Qwerty typists began a parallel program to improve their skills. In this second phase the Dvorak typists progressed less quickly with further Dvorak training than did Qwerty typists training on Qwerty keyboards.

Strong's study does leave some questions unanswered. Because it uses experienced typists it cannot tell us whether beginning Dvorak typists could be trained more quickly than beginning Qwerty typists.

And there's more from the same piece -- this time from someone who is strong Dvorak supporter:

He cites a 1973 study based on six typists at Western Electric where after 104 hours of training on DSK, typists were 2.6 percent faster than they had been on Qwerty. Similarly Yamada reports that in a 1978 study at Oregon State University after 100 hours of training typists were up to 97.6 percent of their old Qwerty speed.

As for the oft-cited VHS vs. Betamax debate, there are numerous problems with the argument that the inferior, but first-to-market technology won. First is that Betamax was actually first to market -- 1975 vs. 1977. Second is that, picture quality aside, VHS was superior to Betamax in one critical dimension that consumers valued: Recording time. The original Betamax format only allowed one hour recordings, vs. four hours for VHS. Thus VHS allowed recording of an entire film, or even an entire American football game, on one cassette. Ad copy made a big deal about this capability. Third is that it's not even clear that Betamax offered the alleged advantage in video quality: In four reviews in Consumer Reports, the Betamax was judged superior to VHS twice, VHS superior to Betamax once, and both equivalent once. Taken together, these factors gave VHS a decisive advantage.

I can't add anything to the Mac-Windows discussion that this audience won't have heard, but I think everyone recognizes that there were far more factors that led to the dominance of Wintel than the fact that it was simply first while Macs were technically better. Certainly lots of us here will remember how Apple used to command truly exorbitant prices for its systems, how it refused to license the OS to give people choices, how its systems lacked expandability, how DOS/Windows systems were compatible with existing software, how Apple abused developers while Microsoft showed them the love, how IBM and other PC manufacturers had strong relationships with brand specifiers in the businesses that were still buying most PCs at that time. Was the MacOS circa, say, 1986 technically superior to Windows at that time? Yeah, sure. But most people weren't buying an OS, they were buying an entire computer -- and looked at as a whole, the outcome of the Wintel-vs.-Mac battle is entirely reasonable without invoking the dubious path-dependence argument.

QWERTY keyboards were expressly designed to be inferior

Mostly an urban myth popularized by Dvorak.
Reason.com
UT Dallas

1Alpha7

It's the University of Texas @ DALLAS : Try this URL : http://www.utdallas.edu/directory/

As events like these at MIT show, and as slashdot quickly approaches a quarter of a million users, it's time for a slashdot reunion. Below is enclosed a list of the first 50 users, the folks who really know what it means to say, "I remember the good ol' days." How many of these users are still active? Reply, and show your true colors. The who replies with the lowest userid gets a prize! CmdrTaco (1) email: malda@slashdot.org
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I think what you were talking about is discussed here. What it points to is that the keys were that close together that when they were pressed in succession at normal speed the arms would get jammed, so the new layout was devised not to separate them, but to make the time needed to move between them longer by making the distance between them longer, so that the keys wouldn't be pressed in such quick succession, thus slowing the typist down in fact.

So, although you were right, QWERTY was indeed intended to slow typing down so that the arms didn't jam. A little demonstration of the rearranged keyboard is the Dvorak keyboard.

I know how easy it is to get used to different keyboard layouts having used QWERTY (of course), AZERTY (French), and am currently typing on a QWERTZ (German).

There is a very interesting paper called The Fable of the Keys that gives some of the history of this debate, and talks about the (lack of) solid evidence that Dvorak is objectively better. Some people may well find they type faster with a Dvorak layout, but I think that part of the improvement is that they had to make an effort (along with an emotional investment) in learning to type with a new layout. How many of those people made that kind of effort when they started on QWERTY? I suspect that there are a lot of folks out there that learned to type only becase computers can't hear very well.
--

Typing Errors in Reason magazine.

Network Effects, Path Dependence and Lock-In

DISMAL SCIENCE FICTIONS Network Effects, Microsoft, and Antitrust Speculation

Mr. Brooks has some good comments about Dvorak vs. QWERTY, including comments on why the Liebowitz and Margolis article isn't exactly proof that dvorak isn't better. He goes over each of the major points of their article.

Regarding the Economist's editorial, I can't say I agree with their analysis: They don't take into consideration ergonomics, the cost if dvorak or qwerty is learned from the start, and the fact that there are no unbiased studies showing one is better than the other. (The GSA study was biased, Mr. Strong had an investment in QWERTY, having put lots of effort into improving/using it).

It is easily shown that that the dvorak keyboard moves the more commonly used keys under the stronger fingers, important to prevent RSI. In addition, the alteration of keys is much better than the QWERTY keyboard, important for speed. (The QWERTY keyboard has this property too, but they keys are on the weakest fingers. This is the accidental benifit mentioned by the economist, tho it possibly risks injury.)

Even Sholes thought that the original keyboard needed improvement, having taken out a patent on this keyboard:
X P M C H R T N S D G K
J B W F L A E I O U Y
Q V (punctuation goes here)
Notice that the vowels are under one hand and that most common words would alternate well.

Regarding Dvorak being baised; I think not. The book, Typewriting Behavior: Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning Typewriting , is authored by four people (Dvorak being only one) and consists of information pertinent to all aspects of typing. In fact, the Dvorak keyboard is only called the simplified keyboard at this point. The book cites several hundred case studies. This book is the result of the $130,000 dollars from the Carnegie Commission for Education.

This is the quintessential book for understanding how humans use keyboards. There isn't anything like it since (tho some have built upon it).

Finally, I have to state my opinion on Economists in general; Most don't know simple math. A good explination of what I mean can be seen on AdBusters' Economists Must Learn to Subtract . This wouldn't be the first time an economist was unable to see past the obvious dollars. Why should they worry about the pain a person will have, later in life? Especially if they can fire that person first?

Economics is currently where physics was in ancient greece. We know a few concepts, one or two working formula, but we're missing huge chunks. Human health, long term viability and quality of living are all left out.

Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. I'm sure I'll get at least one colorful response. Oh, BTW, CmdrTaco, what irks you about the QWERTY origin story/mythos? That dvorak is touted as better for speed? That dvorak is possibly better for your hands? Or that it acts as a possible exception or counter-proof for current economic theory?

Personally, I'm only interested in ease of use and my precious wrists. And since dvorak makes my wrists feel better (even now that I'm back to my QWERTY speed) and switching most systems to dvorak is trivial....

Ciao!

QWERTY was not an immediate standard. Few people knew how to type and virtually every typewriter sold to a business resulted in training. Faster, easier keyboards has plently of opportunity to compete. The mechanical drawbacks of the original QWERTY had already been overcome:

The Blickensderfer used a type-bar configuration similar in principle to the IBM Selectric type ball and, so, could easily offer many different configurations.

QWERTY won on its merits. When the rivals failed, QWERTY was not a standard:

The rival keyboards did ultimately fail, of course.53 But the Qwerty keyboard cannot have been so well established at the time the rival key-boards were first offered that they were rejected because they were non-standard. Manufacturers of typewriters sought and promoted any technical feature that might give them an advantage in the market. Certainly shorter training and greater speed would have been an attractive selling point for a typewriter with an alternative keyboard. Neither can it be said that the rival keyboards were doomed by inferior mechanical characteristics because these companies went on to produce successful and innovative, though Qwerty-based, typing machines. Thus we cannot attribute our inheritance of the Qwerty keyboard to a lack of alternative keyboards or the chance association of this keyboard arrangement with the only mechanically adequate typewriter.

Finally, with no standards or mechanical incentives, QWERTY dominated world markets when it was initially introduced:

We should also take note of the fact that the Qwerty keyboard, although invented in the United States. has become the dominant keyboard throughout the world. Foreign countries, when introduced to typewriters, need not have adopted this keyboard if superior alternatives existed since there would not yet have been any typists trained on Qwerty Yet all other keyboard designs fell before the Qwerty juggernaut.

You have to use HTML formatting to make Slashdot create a link to it.

Though The Economist is an excellent and relatively unbiased magazine, the article cited is an EDITORIAL, and is hardly evidence that the Dvorak is in any way inferior. As for the articles cited within the editorial, those that wrote those articles have a strong bias toward discounting *any* example of market failure, and will construct their research accordingly. Visit Liebowitz's webpage to see just what his ideology is. Most of us would agree that bad standards can locked in, because we've seen it happen. But it is hard to demonstrate "better" versus "good enough" to those who have little understanding of the technology in question, or already equate market position as evidence of being "better".

These two articles give far more details, and, I think, provide a convincing case that the evidence in favor of Dvorak is "cooked." "Should technology choice be a concern of antitrust policy?" and more specifically related to QWERTY vs.Dvorak, "TYPING ERRORS: The standard typewriter keyboard is Exhibit A in the hottest new case against markets. But the evidence has been cooked."