At 10:44 PM 03/03/2000 -0500, someone wrote:
Because something is better does not necessarily mean it will catch on. Our
standard keyboard was designed to slow down typing speed so the keys
wouldn't get tangled. We know of faster (Dvorak) keyboards, but who plans on
retraining all of those who already type the *old* way?
(snip)
This is an "urban myth". The only study of the Dvorak vs. regular
typewriter keyboard is apparently over 50 years old, was badly done, and
showed little difference in typing speed anyway. No one has ever come up
with satisfactory proof that the standard keyboard was EVER intended to
slow keys down, and in fact, specialized keyboards such as the Linotype
keyboard used many of the same key placements as the standard keyboard.
Many professional typists were (and are) able to exceed speeds of 80 wpm
plus. Some could even right/left justify, using spaces, on the fly on
manual keyboards. Dvorak keyboards are easily mapped to todays computers
(they were even sold for a while), but never caught on. Why? There's no
real advantage to the Dvorak, other than the standard placebo effect. A
1956 (U.S.) General Services Administration study showed no difference
between the keyboard speeds (in fact, the standard keyboard was slightly
faster)
I quote one of many web sites on this issue:
"However, as an article in the April 3. 1999 issue of The
Economist notes, hard evidence supporting Dvorak's claims of superiority is
thin on the ground. An often-cited 1944 United States Navy study compared
the speed of typists retrained on Dvorak with the speed of a control group
given supplementary training on QWERTY. The Dvorak typists did better, but
The Economist notes possible biases and methodological errors casting doubt
on the report's veracity, "all of them, it so happens seeming to favour
Dvorak." One of the most glaring is that the US Navy experiments were
conducted by none other than Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the Dvorak
layout's inventor and patent-holder."
"A properly designed and controlled 1956 study by the General
Services Administration cited by The Economist found QWERTY typists to be
roughly as fast as Dvorak typists, or even faster, and in a variety of
other experiments and studies, neither keyboard design of has demonstrated
a decisive advantage. Freelance journalist and author Alex Marshall, a
Dvorak fan, says that before he switched, he was able to type 90 words per
minute in QWERTY, and he now types about 100 words a minute in Dvorak."
The Economist concluded in its April 3, 1999 article that "For
now, merely note that the failure illustrated by the QWERTY myth has more
to do with the study of economics than with markets. For some reason,
economists seem to adopt bogus anecdotal histories and then get locked in".
I go on at (wretchedly) great length because this applies to a
great many opinions about technology, both old and new. Everybody knows a
lot of things that aren't so, or strongly favors a particular technology
that (objectively) is not perceptibly better than competing technologies.
Camera manufacturers, in order to sell new product, must continually
persuade the public that very slight or nonexistent advantages from new
features are nearly as vital as life itself. Lens tests can define
minuscule differences between lenses that can be seen (if at all) only by
extreme enlargement of images, but are regarded as hugely important by
consumers. It's not a rational process, but it's human nature and the
manufacturers ignore it at their peril.
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|