1. The QWERTY keyboard is to reduce the typing speed
At first, the keyboards of typewriters were arranged in alphabetical order, but if the typing speed is too fast, some key combinations are prone to get stuck, so Christopher? Larson? Christopher Latham Sholes invented the QWERTY keyboard layout. He placed the most commonly used letters in the opposite direction, and slowed down the typing speed to the maximum extent to avoid the key jam. Grant applied for a patent in 1868, and in 1873, the first commercial typewriter using this layout was successfully put on the market. This is why there is the arrangement of keyboards today.
Ironically, this keyboard arrangement, which was formed 129 years ago to slow down the speed of typing, continues to this day. Bruce in 1986? Sir Buryvein once said in the article "Wonderful Writing Machine": "The arrangement of QWERTY is very inefficient." For example, most typists are right-handed, but with QWERTY, the left hand takes up 57% of the work. The two little fingers and the left ring finger are the weakest fingers, but they are frequently used. The utilization rate of letters in the middle column only accounts for about 3% of the whole typing work, so in order to type a word, you often have to move your fingers up and down.
2. DUORAK keyboard much faster than QWERTY keyboard
Augst in p>193? August Dvorak invented a superior DUORAK keyboard system, in which nine most commonly used letters were listed in the keyboard. This design enables the typist to type at least 3 words without leaving the keys. QWERTY can only do 5 words. DUORAK reduces work intensity and improves work efficiency by reducing the amount of finger movement. With DUORAK, the typist's fingers move an average of 1 mile a day, while QWERTY moves 12 to 2 miles.
during world war ii, Augst? Duo Ranke once assembled 14 naval typists to practice DUORAK, and after one month, their speed increased by an astonishing 68%. DUORAK keyboard makes the right hand bear 56% of the work; The most powerful finger has the largest workload; 7% typing is done in the middle column without moving your fingers. However, at that time, it coincided with the Second World War and the lack of combat materials. This new keyboard was discontinued without asking the market.
try the DUORAK keyboard yourself!
Windows has built-in support for it. Open the Control Panel → Keyboard, enter the Input Method Locale tab, click the Add button, set the Input Method Locale to English (USA), and find "American English -DUORAK" in the Keyboard Layout/Input Method column. After confirmation, the key positions have all changed. Now you have the capital to improve your English typing speed. Of course, it still takes time to re-adapt to the new system and train patiently before success.
3. The more advanced MALT keyboard
What goes further than DUORAK is the connection? The MALT keyboard invented by Lillian Malt. It has changed the original staggered character-key ranks, made the thumb more used, and made the "Backspace" and other keys originally far away from the center of the keyboard easier to reach. However, the MALT keyboard needs special hardware to be installed on the computer, so it has not been widely used.
There is also the following statement
The computer keyboard evolved from the English typewriter keyboard. When it first appeared on the computer, it appeared in the image of a component called "teletypewriter".
paper tape typewriters and card typewriters
In fact, keyboards appeared in computer accessories earlier than teletypewriters. In the era when computers could still occupy a hall, the main computer input devices were punched paper tape and punched cards. Of course, these paper tapes and cards could not be worn out by hand. They were worn out by special "paper tape puncher" and "card puncher". In these two cases, Only relatively speaking, these two devices are not part of the computer, which is different from teletypewriter, so we don't regard them as part of the development history of computer keyboards.
"Teletypewriter" is the main interactive input and output device of the computer before the keyboard+display input and output device appeared. You can imagine it as a printer with a keyboard on the top, and the words typed by the user and the output of the computer will be printed on the printout port in front of the keyboard.
"Teletypewriter" is the most important computer interactive input and output equipment in the era of MAINCOMPUTER and SMALLCOMPUTER. After the mid-197s, with the maturity of display design, teletypewriter gradually withdrew from the world of computers, while keyboard became an independent device.
The keyboard of "Teletypewriter" is not as key-pressed and multifunctional as today's computer keyboard. In fact, it is almost the same as a full-size typewriter keyboard, with a mechanical key structure under bakelite plastic, which was also inherited by the early computer keyboard.
In this period, due to the small size of personal computers, the popular design is to make the keyboard directly on the host computer, which is the structure of the famous APPLEII series computers. However, as IBM PC began to introduce the then huge hard disk into personal computers, in the mid-198s, independent keyboards became the mainstream design.
Early keyboards were almost all mechanical keyboards, to be precise, mechanical contact keyboards, which used electrical contact as a symbol and mechanical metal springs as an elastic mechanism. This kind of keyboard was very popular at that time because of its hard feel, long key stroke, quick and crisp change of key resistance and close touch to typewriter keyboard. Up to now, quite a few people still miss the touch of this keyboard.
However, the two biggest disadvantages of mechanical contact keyboard are that the mechanical spring is easily damaged, and the electrical contact will be oxidized after long-term use, resulting in the failure of keys. Therefore, after the 199s, the mechanical touch keyboard gradually withdrew from the historical stage.
at first, it was replaced by an electromagnetic mechanical keyboard. The electromagnetic mechanical keyboard is still a mechanical keyboard, but it is different from the mechanical contact keyboard in that it does not rely on mechanical force to connect two electrical contacts, but closes the electrical contacts in a micro potentiometer, and a magnet is placed under the keys to connect the current through magnetic force.
Compared with the mechanical contact keyboard, the service life of the electromagnetic mechanical keyboard is much longer, but it still fails to solve the problem that the mechanical moving part of the mechanical keyboard is easily damaged, so the electromagnetic mechanical keyboard did not survive in the market for long, and was quickly replaced by the non-contact keyboard that appeared in the late 198s.
Therefore, the non-contact keyboards are relatively different from the previous "contact keyboards". Unlike the "contact keyboards", they do not rely on the mechanical communication of conductive contacts to obtain key signals, but rely on the changes of electrical parameters of the keys themselves. Because there is no need for mechanical contact of contacts, its service life can be much stronger.
the main non-contact keyboards are resistive keyboards and capacitive keyboards. Among them, capacitive keyboard is more widely used because of its simpler process and lower cost. Compared with the mechanical keyboard, its two biggest characteristics are that the spring made of elastic rubber replaces the mechanical metal spring, and at the same time, the electrical communication of the mechanical keyboard is changed to obtain the key signal through the capacitance change brought by the distance change between the key bottom and the two capacitor plates at the keyboard bottom.
Compared with the mechanical keyboard, the feel of the capacitive keyboard has changed greatly, and it has become soft and resilient. This feel has continued to this day and has become the mainstream design feel of the keyboard at present, which is why many articles say that the current keyboards are all capacitive keyboards, but in fact, this feel does not come from the capacitive structure, but from the replacement of mechanical metal springs by rubber springs, which is not the reason why the capacitive keyboard is a capacitive keyboard.
Because of its principle, each key of a capacitive keyboard must be made into an independent closed structure, and this keyboard is also classified as a "closed keyboard".
For most keyboard articles, the capacitive keyboard has come to an end, but in fact, their mistakes are also here. Why? Let's sell a key here first, and then continue when we talk about the structure of the keyboard.
Keyboard key position design
The key position design of a keyboard includes two concepts, one is the main English and numeric key position design, and the other is various auxiliary key position design.
The most common design scheme for English and numeric keys is the commonly known "QWERTY" Cody keyboard. This is a bond scheme invented by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1868.
As we all know, the main design purpose of the Cody keyboard is to make the keystroke speed not too fast. However, there is a small mistake in many articles, that is, the key position design of Cody's keyboard is not to "make the keystroke speed not too fast and cause the jam", but to "try to improve the typing speed without getting stuck".
There is a subtle difference between these two statements, that is to say, slowing down the typing speed is not the ultimate goal, and the QWERTY keyboard is not blindly slowing down. Although it has a slow-down design that puts a common combination like ED on one finger, there are also many accelerated key combinations like ER.
In fact, the fundamental reason for this design lies in the structure of the mechanical typewriter. The structure of the type lever determines that when two types that are close to each other are pressed at the same time, they will get stuck, but the same problem will not happen to two types that are far away from each other. I believe that people who have experience in using English typewriters will understand it.
On Cody's keyboard, some commonly used letters are placed on the ring finger, little finger and other positions, which has always been considered as using the inflexibility of little finger to slow down the speed. However, this statement does not take into account the actual situation of mechanical typewriters. Although the index finger is the most flexible, the keys on the key position of the index finger are also the most likely to get stuck, so it is natural to put the commonly used letters on the edge to ensure that they will not get stuck when typing at high speed.
Therefore, the ultimate goal of designing the Coty keyboard is not to simply reduce the typing speed. In fact, the design of the Coty keyboard is just to improve the typing speed, just to "try to improve the typing speed without getting stuck".
since the 2th century, the invention of electromechanical typewriters has made it no longer an important problem that the type arm of mechanical typewriters is stuck, and many high-speed typing keyboards have emerged. One of the most famous is the DVORAK dvorak keyboard.
dvorak keyboard is a key position scheme designed by Professor August Dvorak in 193. Because the mechanical structure of keys is no longer considered, the key arrangement is completely designed according to the idealized keystroke rate distribution. The stroke of finger movement is much smaller than that of Cody keyboard, and the average typing speed is almost doubled. However, just like many things, the force of habit is irresistible. So far, dvorak keyboard has only been used in a few professional occasions. But for those who want to try, you can try the dvorak keyboard scheme that comes with Windows.
non-English keyboard scheme
keyboards in various languages are basically changed from English keyboards, and the arrangement of most keys is not far from that of English keyboards, with only some slight differences. For example, the dollar symbol on the British keyboard has become a pound symbol, while the mother and daughter Y and Z on the German keyboard have exchanged positions.
keyboards in various Far Eastern languages are not much different from non-standard American English keyboards in terms of English keys, but there are obvious differences in some auxiliary keys. For users in China, the most easily seen non-American language keyboard is probably the Japanese keyboard that is common in the second-hand market. Compared with the standard English keyboard, most of its keys are the same, but there are obvious differences in the position of some punctuation marks, which leads to the situation that when some punctuation marks are used in the English system, the identification of the keys does not correspond to the actual content.
Another concept of key position design is the design of auxiliary keys. From the earliest IBM PC 83 keyboard to the mainstream 18-key Windows98 keyboard, it has been updated for several generations, but there is no fundamental change in general. Although some of them are compact designs, they are not successful according to the market reaction. It can be seen that the current keyboard key position design has been tested in practice for many years and is already a very mature and ideal design.
Self-defeating cross direction key design
The so-called cross direction key refers to the cross arrangement of independent direction keys on the keyboard. This design was originally designed to be closer to the traditional 83 keyboard design in image, but the actual effect is quite poor.
The earliest cross-shaped keys were used on Microsoft's first-generation ergonomic keyboard, but later they became the most reviled design in this generation of famous products. The cross-shaped keys look good, but when you actually use them, you will find that the fingers of this key design will be awkwardly squeezed together, which is extremely inconvenient in daily use or in games, especially in racing games. So Microsoft changed back to the original design in the second generation products.
Ironically, Microsoft, the initiator, has stopped using the cross-shaped arrow keys, but recently some domestic manufacturers have picked up this self-defeating design and publicized it as one of the characteristic designs. It is strongly recommended that you don't think about it, or you will suffer enough if you buy it back.
structure of keyboard
as mentioned earlier, the current keyboard is not really a capacitive keyboard, so what kind of keyboard does it belong to? Let's take apart a keyboard and have a look.
From the photo, we can see an ordinary ultra-thin keyboard. After removing the screws on the back, the keyboard can be disassembled into several parts as shown in the figure.
first of all, the keyboard, the upper cover and the keycap of each key embedded in it, which is the main contact part of the user.
under the upper cover, there is a rubber film, and there is an elastic key cap at the position of each key. This part is the main elastic element of the keyboard. The feel of a keyboard is mainly determined by the properties and materials of this part, so its shape design and rubber composition are the secrets of major keyboard manufacturers. It should be pointed out that not all manufacturers use such an integrated rubber film, and some manufacturers, such as BenQ, are used to each keyboard.