Our electronic, digital, screen-based and physical keyboards have had the same configuration – QWERTY or a slight variation of it – since the first commercially successful typewriters in the 1870s. Image courtesy of National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Note the piano keys for typing – only 6 in the model, 21 in the patent illustration. How we arrived at QWERTY keyboards Patent model for Sholes, Glidden & Soule typewriter (patent number 79265, 23 June 1868). The advertisements show the Thurber writing machine, 1843 and the Malling Hansen Writing Ball, 1865. Not all early writing machines had keyboards: some of them had key-roundels or key-domes. In a way, that’s the equivalent of moistening a finger to turn the pages of an e-book – the material rationale for certain actions (like pressing a key to imprint a letter on paper) may be long gone, but particular forms of interaction have become embedded in practice, even in unrelated or redefined contexts. Indeed, they might be amused looking at the 21st-century digital device simulating the mechanical functions of a keyboard and being tapped in the same way that their own mechanical contraptions necessitated. But if you were to be transported back to the last decades of the 19th century, by when the first commercially viable typewriters had become commonplace, you could present the keyboard on your 21st century device and typists – who were then referred to as ‘typewriters’ – would have no problem using it, or at least recognising the keyboard as entirely familiar. What a strange idea, to peck at letters arranged in a jumble, not in alphabetical order, where even the literate could struggle to put together a word in speedy fashion. In both cases, the principle is that the alphabet is laid out in front of us in a very specific arrangement, while our fingers hover over that array, pressing or tapping individual keys to compose text.ĭoes this setup sound peculiar at all? Most likely not, given how familiar and invested we are in this practice, but just imagine how it would have struck the general public in the late 1800s. Yes, the very thing that was used for typing this text – and the same ‘thing’ that you might use on your computer or phone the moment you’ve finished reading! While the two ‘things’ are not quite the same – I used an instrument with physical and material properties, you might use a floating configuration that simulates ‘keys’ on a screen – there is a direct bodily and functional link in the experience of typing. Perhaps the most ubiquitous, resilient and yet nearly invisible thread linking the 19th century, the second industrial revolution, the machine age and the digital era is the humble keyboard – a material and conceptual legacy that we encounter every single day. Sprite-icon-accessible-parking sprite-icon-apple-podcasts sprite-icon-arrow-up sprite-icon-audio-description sprite-icon-baby-changing-facilities sprite-icon-british-sign-language sprite-icon-caret sprite-icon-chevron-in-circle sprite-icon-chevron sprite-icon-cross sprite-icon-deezer sprite-icon-disabled-parking sprite-icon-down-block-arrow sprite-icon-download sprite-icon-external Facebook sprite-icon-google-podcasts sprite-icon-hearing-loop sprite-icon-instagram LinkedIn sprite-icon-live-subtitling sprite-icon-medium sprite-icon-menu sprite-icon-minus-in-circle sprite-icon-online-and-in-person sprite-icon-online-event sprite-icon-open-quote sprite-icon-padlock sprite-icon-pause sprite-icon-play sprite-icon-plus-in-circle sprite-icon-podcast-addict sprite-icon-quote sprite-icon-right-arrow sprite-icon-search sprite-icon-soundcloud-blank sprite-icon-soundcloud sprite-icon-spotify sprite-icon-stitcher sprite-icon-subtitles Twitter sprite-icon-up-block-arrow Vimeo sprite-icon-warning sprite-icon-wheelchair-accessible-venue sprite-icon-youtube
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