Left-Handed Dvorak Keyboards
I used to play pranks on people by switching their keyboard layout to left handed dvorak and watching them try to type something. Dvorak is a very efficient keyboard layout created by August Dvorak during World War II. The layout never became mainstream because people could not break the very old tradition of the QWERTY keyboard which was originally made to insure old typewriters wouldn't jam. Since keyboards don't jam like old typewriters did the Dvorak layout is actually better on your hands and easier to type fast with. I figured it would be very difficult to learn but after trying to type using a Dvorak layout for two minutes I was already learning many of the common key positions. QWERTY is impossibly hard to learn compared to Dvorak and I'm going to try learning Dvorak a bit to see if I can type fast with it and know two keyboard layouts in case it ever comes in handy... which I doubt.
2 Comments:
Of course! The secretaries protested, since they had been trained on QWERTY, and who could resist?
It wasn't very old by then, but it was widely used, and women didn't want to have to learn a new system.
QWERTY was the most inefficient system that they could devise.
Don't forget that l was 1 and O was 0 back then, too.
Some European countries use Dvorak as their conventional layout. I'm sorry, I don't remember which ones, though.
Victoria
By Anonymous, at 10:25 PM
Good on 'ya! I've been using Dvorak for over two years now, I think. I do on occasion still have to use Qwerty (on other people's computers, for example), and I hate every keystroke despite being able to type quite quickly still on Qwerty. I've been just today considering learning the left-handed Dvorak layout so that I can type and do other stuff with my right hand (mouse for instance). That's one of the reasons why I came across your post here.
By Paul Dann, at 9:37 AM
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