What could be the main rationale behind the arrangement of the characters on the standard keyboard? What are the distinct features between the French Standard Keyboard layout chart and that of Windows standard Keyboard layout chart? I am currently researching into the technological advancement from old till now. Thank you.
The rational behind the arrangement of the characters on the standard keyboard
It was in 1874 when the first commercial typewriter was manufactured by Remington & Sons and it was called Remington Number 1. And this typewriter was designed by Christopher Sholes and used the “QWERTY” keyboard that we are familiar with today. The original prototypes created by Sholes had an issue with the bars crashing with each other and jamming.
As the story goes, he positioned the keys with the most familiar letters in hard to reach places so that the typists would slow down and try to prevent this problem. Whatever is the reason behind the creation of the QWERTY layout, it appears that the invention of the first keyboard layout would be perfect.
Aside from the QWERTY layout, there is also the Dvorak keyboard layout and it is very different from the QWERTY layout. In the Dvorak layout, it tries to decrease the distance travelled by the fingers. All of the most commonly used letters are placed in the home row so your fingers will no longer have to move to press on the keys.