The keyboard of the typewriter, which marked a milestone in the evolution of interfaces, teaches us how patently obsolete technology has managed to impose himself on the strength of invidividuo. The interfaces can come designed by industry, but the ultimate reason for being, its setting is a matter of real users.
In 1865, Christopher Scholes and his brother, a school teacher, designed a typewriter, on a model of corporate cosmology: the "philosophy of interchangeable parts" as part of a work environment string extends to the home. Isacc M. Singer and had been applied with great success in the 1860's in your sewing machine. These were pieces that build machines, so that the latter were not only a perfect assembly of various parts. The dissemination and widespread use of such technologies increased significantly in a short period of time. All machines were the same, their parts were interchangeable and easily replaceable without affecting the rest of the set. And above all, all users were becoming the same. The machine makes no distinction or prejudice the ability of those who drive. The user is all possible. The
Scholes and a team of linguists analyzed what were the most commonly used letter sequences, so that your organization on the board, with some practice, provided a fast and a transcript printed typography was not subject to the whims of calligraphy . However, it soon became apparent that we had to solve the mechanical problems that made the keys stick together. The result was the qwerty keyboard , which is the sequence of the first letters in the top row. It was patented in 1873.
qwerty keyboard born to prevent binding of the lyrics, but at the same time reducing the actual performance of the user. In the first years after the appearance of typewriter keys striking the paper on the roll were not visible, so often, when it got stuck two or more keys, the user continued to write without knowing he was repeating the same letter are blocked. To do this, Scholes away the vowels from each other, since these letters were most used, to be slower the concatenation of the press. But here that 127 years later, when we no longer have that problem with a computer, still using qwerty keyboard .
So who reacts and sets the standard? Is the standard of an already given, or on the contrary, daily practice and negotiation are defining their evolution? In 1904 he convened an international conference to set the standard among different models of keyboard, but to no avail as typing teachers flatly refused to adopt another standard that is not the qwerty . The convenience of learning in each of the users is the tractive force in the progress of a medium like the keyboard. These are not mere technical factors that shape a process, but that individuals highly value the immediate availability on a keyboard, and to assess unless the phases of learning. Thus, the influence of global standard itself produces its own impasse: scientists and designers can not develop new research on keyboards because they seem doomed to failure. In 1930, August Dvorak keyboard layout developed for the U.S. Navy, in collaboration with a professional group of typists, which provided more than the speed and reliability of typing. However, although it is still used in some places, never imposed on Scholes model, which will become standard.
In 1956, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began his experiments on keyboards that operate directly on the internal architecture of computers. The user can now establish direct relationship with the computer through direct orders typed. In 1973, Don Lancaster achieves a direct connection between a keyboard and a television. The information is already deployed on a ordinary TV. But nobody is proposing a change occur in the keyboard model to suit the new practices of computer users. The few proposals that fail to progress do not yet seem able to influence a large scale. qwerty keyboard is used today in 45 countries with Roman alphabets, except in 3 cases.
The keyboard has become, thanks to the computer, the tool environment inherent in many of the citizens: it is literally its projection in the mechanical order. Not expected to change soon. The voice software is not yet fully enough in a culture still connected to some privacy in communications. Thus, created centuries ago, the keyboard Scholes still reigns as standard, although their functions have been depleted because of an outdated design. The unit features a very settled protocols involving just affected by the comfort and the technical difficulties of such enormous change. Nor should we forget that the keyboard was designed and executed in English, which as the Greenwich Meridian Time mark international language. The universal keyboard interface greatly helped linguistic colonialism of England and the U.S., thanks to the huge bureaucracy paper got a great insight into the cultural fabric of the colonized countries in Africa and Asia. the qwerty keyboard is not seriously threatened is also in good part because the first producer technology are the U.S.. And yet there is still speaking English.
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