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Just how this came to be is a narrative that remains murky and – ironically – far from fixed. It's a story that offers insights into the sometimes unexpected pace of technological change, and one that's peopled by unsung inventors and obsessive tinkerers. It taps a fervent debate that most of us are oblivious to.
The earliest typewriters were cumbersome, moody machines but there was nevertheless an order to their keys that any English-speaking user could readily glean: they were arranged alphabetically. So why change this logical layout? Legend has it that Qwerty – known for the jabberwocky-style word formed by the first six letters of its top row – was dreamt up with the express purpose of slowing typists down. One character even lectures another about it in a Paulo Coelho novel.
In fact, the Qwerty layout was concocted to prevent keys from jamming – or at least, that's what most experts have tended to believe. The letters on a typewriter are affixed to metal arms, which are activated by the keys; on early models, if a lever was activated before its neighbour had fully come back down to rest, they would jam, forcing the typist to stop. Enter Christopher Sholes. Born in small-town Pennsylvania in 1819, Sholes was many things, including newspaper editor and Wisconsin state senator. He was also one of a team of inventors credited with building the first commercially viable typewriter. Having already tried to build machines for typesetting and printing numbers, Sholes' adventures in type began in 1867, when he read an article in Scientific American describing the Pterotype, a prototype typewriter invented by one John Pratt. The article sounded the death knoll for that "laborious and unsatisfactory" instrument, the pen, soon to be set down in favour of "playing on the literary piano".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @02:03AM
Who needs holograms, 2D videos seem to be enough for a disturbingly large minority of the population to abandon the written word to an alarming degree.
It's not that I mind videos as such, for entertainment or for information that actually has a major visual component, but so many things that would be better communicated with text and a few pictures are dumped on youtube as unedited rambles.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @11:11AM
They think they are getting *CLOSER* to others by listening to a video'd ramble in comparison to reading correspondence from others in text form (whether written or typed.) Something that I have learned over the years is it doesn't matter whether you spend time in person, via text, or via video. The person presented may still not turn out to be the person you expect, whether because you meet them in-person after exclusively knowing them online, or because you normally associate with them inside of one social construct RL, and when travelling into another social construct their entire demeanor changes. (kink scene popped into my head as an example, but also going to parties with someone you normally know from school, or someone you normally hang out with casually instead being met in a formal or 'clique-ish' social setting.)
The nuance to learning about others can be quite great, but also if your first and second negative experience of them coincide you can probably assume that is how they will always be around you.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 19 2016, @07:27PM
it gets me down, it really does, when I'm trying to figure out how to do something, and all I can find is YouTubes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]