The QWERTY Keyboard

From the top left hand corner of the keyboard, the first six letters are almost invariably QWERTY.  Why is that, and how did the QWERTY keyboard become so popular?

Sholes and Glidden 1874

In 1868, an American Mechanical Engineer, Christopher Latham Sholes, produced a type-writer that had letters arranged in alphabetical order; unfortunately, among the design problems was the fact that if a typist worked too quickly, keys would jam together and slow the typist down (for those unfamiliar with the mechanical type-writer, it has arms, called keybars, with letters on the end. The keybars were raised to strike the printing surface when the corresponding key was pressed. The keybars became tangled if a typist hit two adjacent keys in quick succession). Sholes, with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé (and probably educator Amos Densmore, who studied letter-pair frequency), redesigned the type-writer with the current QWERTY layout that survives today (it is a common misconception that the QWERTY design was meant to slow down typists so the ‘jams’ would not occur; rather, it was an attempt to prevent jams and accelerate a typist’s speed).  

Sholes was not an efficient businessman, or marketer, and sold the rights to the invention to James Densmore, a banker (and brother of Amos Densmore). James Densmore partnered with Philo Remington (of rifle manufacturing fame) to market and manufacture the type-writer. In 1877, the very first Sholes & Glidden Typewriter was available to the market, but it took engineers at Remington a few years to create a design that appealed to the masses; after the engineer’s tweeks, sales increased dramatically.  

There were competitors, with different layout configurations, but Remington had an ace up their sleeve…

They had an ace typist, Frank McGurrin, probably the first touch typist. He won several crucial typing contests, which were commonplace competitions in the late 1880s. In particular, McGurrin won a prestigious Cincinnati typing contest in 1888. The New York Times declared that the victory made it clear that the Remington machine was superior. And so the age of the QWERTY keyboard began…

Since then, there has been opposition to the QWERTY design, most notably due to the research of Frank Gilbreth, which eventually led to August Dvorak’s design. In the 1920s, Gilbreth, an Industrial Engineer, carried out time and motion studies and declared that alternate design layouts could not only increase speed, but reduce errors and fatigue. In the 1930s, Dvorak (along with colleagues at the University of Washington) designed a new keyboard layout, based on Gilbreth’s research; and, in 1936, the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard was patented, and Dvorak claimed it provided a scientifically proven, enhanced performance over the QWERTY design. Dvorak’s scientific methods have been seriously questioned, but he managed to convince the US Navy to order thousands of typewriters; regrettably (for Dvorak), the Treasury Department refused to complete the transaction (there was a Navy study that demonstrated the superiority of the Dvorak machine, but the experimental set-up and statistical analysis was unsound; furthermore, it was later revealed (by Sholes biographer, Arthur Foulke) that the author of the report was none other than Lieutenant Commander August Dvorak).

There have been some studies that indicate that Dvorak’s design may increase typing speed, but the layout hasn’t gained much momentum in the modern world.

 The ubiquity of the QWERTY keyboard, and the infrastructure surrounding the design (instruction infrastructure (instructors, facilities, books, software…), touch-typists already trained, manufacturing facility set-up, etcetera) dictate that the QWERTY keyboard will survive, unchallenged, until keyboards are replaced with an alternate technology (voice recognition, gesture recognition and motion sensing technology, or others (thought recognition?)).

 Long live QWERTY!

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For more information:

The Fable of the Keys, by S.J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis

QWERTY at Wikipedia

CBC Radio Spark

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“If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it”

http://www.ifixit.com

I happened upon an interesting website called iFixit that provides user manuals for repairing household appliances and electronic devices (this post’s title is from their Self-Repair Manifesto).

The next time something breaks (or, before you buy a gadget and want to know how easy it is to repair it or replace its battery) check out the site: it’s free, and there are step-by-step instructions and photos to guide you through the repair process. If something breaks, instead of buying a new one, try repairing your old one!

And, if you possess specific knowledge about repairing a device, you can share your expertise through the site.

The goal of Luke and Kyle (the website’s creators) is to help ‘fix the world’ by providing repair manuals for any hardware you can think of.

What an excellent idea!

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Muse: the brainwave sensing headband

Have you ever wanted to control objects with only your thoughts?

A company called InteraXon claims they have invented a device that will eventually “let you do more with your mind than you ever thought possible.”

Their product — Muse — is a brainwave-sensing headband; in their words, a comfortable, sleek four-sensor headband (to me, it looks like something from a bad science fiction movie, but I’m not exactly a fashion plate, so you should make your own determination).

InteraXon claims that their device will facilitate self-improvement in your brain activity. Muse measures your brainwaves and sends them to your smart phone or tablet and you can instantly gauge your brain’s effectiveness; for example, you can see if you are creating gentle, meditative, low-frequency alpha waves, or the intense, jagged peaks of ultra-creative beta waves. In this way, they claim, you will be able to improve your brain’s operation.

InteraXon is planning to enable brainwaves to control devices in the real world; devices that will respond to your thoughts. The Muse headband connects wirelessly, using Bluetooth, and will translate your brainwaves into directions to control your electronic devices, apps, and games.

InteraXon has an account on Indiegogo, hoping to raise the funds necessary to deliver brain-controlled computing to the masses.

Early-birds can get their hands on a Muse headband for a pledge of $135. For more information, check out the video on their website.

I suppose I’m just a bit paranoid, imagining the worst, but I’m slightly concerned about my brainwaves — my thoughts — being captured digitally and possibly re-used and manipulated: it gives me a bad case of the willies.

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Slime mould and bio-computers

Slime moulds germinate from a spore and begin life as a haploid (one set of chromosomes) amoebae organism, flowing along the floor of a forest, eating bacteria. When food supply becomes scarce, a chemical (cAMP) is released, which induces the individual amoebae to congregate into a mass: they form streams of cells, referred to as pseudoplasmodium, and the separate streams congregate to form a mass as large as one-hundred thousand cells. The individual amoeba secrete adhesion molecules; they bond together, and develop a slime sheet ‘cap’ that envelops the mass. The mass then behaves as a single organism, gliding across the forest floor, leaving a trail of slime in its wake.

It is a brainless, primeval organism, yet Japanese scientists have studied the slime mould colonies for years as the colonies have navigated mazes. The scientists believe that the behavior of the slime mould may facilitate the design of complex problem-solving bio-computers.

[Image by Toshiyuki Nakagaki].

According to Toshiyuki Nakagaki (at Hokkaido University’s Research Institute for Electronic Science), slime mold colonies use a form of information-processing to optimize a path through a maze (toward a food-source, which is signaled by a higher concentration of ammonia); and, at the same time, the organism avoids stressors that would damage it. They are able to adapt to environmental variations and can develop resistance to new stimulus. 

Nakagaki’s research of slime mould garnered an Ig Nobel  prize (Ig Nobel prizes are a spoof of Nobel Prizes and are awarded to scientists who “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”).

Apparently, slime moulds are able to develop more efficient networks than our most advanced technology. Masashi Aono, a researcher at Riken (in Waka, Japan) would like to develop a bio-computer: his lofty plan is to eventually duplicate the human brain with slime moulds.

For some reason the movie The Blob just burbled into consciousness.

 

 

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T-rays and Smart Phones

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas (Dr. Kenneth O, professor of electrical engineering, and his colleagues) have developed a CMOS chip that will enable smart phone cameras to ‘see through’ objects (walls, skin, et cetera). The camera will use signals in the terahertz range (THz) of the electromagnetic spectrum. The T-ray, as it is being called, has a much less intense radiation field than the X-ray, and may provide health professionals with immediate benefits [photo credit (Kenneth O & Dae Yeon Kim): UTD]

There are numerous positive applications, among them, scanning for skin cancer, breast cancer, tooth decay, and damage inside building walls.

I suppose that in the hands of a creep there are negative applications as well: it probably has the ability to ‘see through’ clothing. Improper cancer self-diagnosis and hypochondria may be more prevalent as well.

It must be more difficult every day for people to write science fiction.