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The QWERTY Keyboard is Purposely Bad · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
0:31
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give a tippity tap tip of
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Speaker 1: the cap to our super producer, mister Max Williams. I
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Speaker 1: am the quirity of your heart.
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Speaker 2: Yes you are, theory, oh man. I love the word
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Speaker 2: quirity as a word. I know it's not actually a word,
0:49
Speaker 2: but everything words. It's American English. Everything can be a word.
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Speaker 2: I'm Ben Bullen, your no old brown.
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Speaker 1: We are we are indeed talking about the quirty keyboard.
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Speaker 1: If you are listening on your phone, folks, and if
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Speaker 1: you are in a safe place you're not driving, why
1:05
Speaker 1: not pull up your text message app and look at
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Speaker 1: the little clickity clack keyboard on there. There is a
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Speaker 1: very high likelihood that at the top left of that
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Speaker 1: keyboard you will see the following letters Q W, E
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Speaker 1: R T. Why in that order? Why that's today? Because
1:30
Speaker 1: we like you? Yeah right, because we like you. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's Queerity. Is the keyboard layout on your laptop, it's
1:37
Speaker 1: on your phone, It's freaking everywhere, And we kid you not, folks.
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Speaker 1: The design makes no sense, nol. This is actually something
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Speaker 1: that I was talking about with Dylan's new dad, Mister
1:50
Speaker 1: McKenzie suggested this episode. So, mister m if you're tuning in,
1:55
Speaker 1: great idea.
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Speaker 2: Sir, love that all in the family here on ridiculous.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: It's one of those things though, where I think we
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Speaker 2: all had a moment when we were young where we
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Speaker 2: thought we were real clever for noticing that the keyboard
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Speaker 2: was not in alphabetical order.
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Speaker 1: Look at us being observant and stuff. Right, yeah, Oh,
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Speaker 1: and we you mentioned that's Dylan Fagot. It's good to do. Yeah, Dylan, Dylan.
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Speaker 1: It Dylan. Yeah, it's Dylan. Oh yeah, you guys, So
2:28
Speaker 1: who's here?
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Speaker 2: Oh he's my friend.
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Speaker 1: God, that's a fun w Yeah, Dylan, good friend of
2:41
Speaker 1: the show, recently entered into a marriage. It's true, it's true.
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Speaker 2: But did you guys ever have did you guys have
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Speaker 2: that aha moment or you patted yourself on the back
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Speaker 2: for Wait a minute, I'm so clever for noticing this.
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Speaker 1: What's what gives? I was twenty three?
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Speaker 2: There you go, Hey, guys, I still have to look
2:59
Speaker 2: up how to tie it tie on YouTube. There's no
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Speaker 2: shame in any of this stuff.
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Speaker 1: I thought there was a secret message encoded in the
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Speaker 1: keyboard layout. The young Ben Bullen concluded that was the
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Speaker 1: only reason you would put these letters in this order.
3:15
Speaker 1: That Ben Bullen was incorrect, but it is. It is
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Speaker 1: something that seems rife with questions, does it not? And
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Speaker 1: people have that moment of epiphany you were describing NOL.
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Speaker 1: If you were to look at a standard keyboard layout
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Speaker 1: for a computer phone today, you will clock that the
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Speaker 1: letters are not arranged in alphabetical order. The querity keyboard
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Speaker 1: is called the quarity keyboard because it's named for those
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Speaker 1: six letters in the top left, just under the numbers,
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Speaker 1: reading left to right. Here's the thing, Though everybody knows
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Speaker 1: there are theoretically more efficient keyboard layouts available, why don't
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Speaker 1: you just put all the commonly used letters to get well?
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Speaker 2: And you know, with the advents of the iPhone, for example,
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Speaker 2: and the evolution of the communication on those devices or whatever.
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Speaker 2: If Android does also applies to you, you can sub
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Speaker 2: in different keyboard layouts pretty easily. You can get custom
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Speaker 2: keyboard layouts. You know, the world is your typographical oyster.
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Speaker 2: And we will talk about some alternatives to quirty, But
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Speaker 2: why don't we first talk about typewriters. Yeah, because you
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Speaker 2: couldn't boiler, couldn't subend different keyboard sets on those bad boys.
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Speaker 1: Right, Even the default keyboard layout you get on any
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Speaker 1: phone in the Anglo sphere is going to be querity. Yes.
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Speaker 1: And here's why go back in time with us, folks.
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Speaker 1: It's eighteen seventy four when Remington and Suns manufactures the
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Speaker 1: first commercial typewriter they call the Shoals and Glitten typewriter
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Speaker 1: or the Remington Number one.
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Speaker 2: Didn't Remington also make guns, poppy cocks, baldered kettle, But
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Speaker 2: I guess there's a certain amount of machining that that
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Speaker 2: both devices share. But you know, the pen is mightier
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Speaker 2: than the gun, that's right, Ben. The Shoals and Glidden
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Speaker 2: typewriter or Remington Number one used a mechanism designed by
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Speaker 2: Christopher Latham Shoals and Carlos Glidden. These were two men
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Speaker 2: along with Samuel Sole, who patented this design, and in
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Speaker 2: order to continue in their work with you know, these
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Speaker 2: types of machines, they sought funding and Shoals reached out
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Speaker 2: to a former business associate by the name of James
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Speaker 2: Denzmol who encouraged Sholes to work on the layout a
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Speaker 2: little bit the very thing that we're talking about to
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Speaker 2: kind of improve the let's call it ergonomics of the
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Speaker 2: keyboard layout.
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Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, And we're getting a lot of this
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Speaker 1: from our alma matter how stuff works. There's a fantastic
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Speaker 1: article by our old pal Chris Pollette. Remember Chris from
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Speaker 1: tech Stuff, of course, were the founding fathers of tech Stuff.
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Speaker 2: I never knew him personally. I sort of knew him
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Speaker 2: as the Text Stuff co host of the past. I
6:19
Speaker 2: always knew Jonathan post Pullette.
6:22
Speaker 1: They made a They made a heck of a team.
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Speaker 1: Chris was a Chris is a librarian. Now he was
6:31
Speaker 1: like that famously Taciturn president. Who was it, Woodrow Wilson.
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Speaker 1: You love that guy, right, I got my alliterations. Just
6:43
Speaker 1: remember when it comes to Woodrow Wilson. Kim okay, guys,
6:49
Speaker 1: really quickly off, that's a top from it.
6:52
Speaker 2: It's a good beat for max topic really quickly, just
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Speaker 2: talking about presidents and and I maybe have mentioned uh
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Speaker 2: In in discussing the much maligned Woodrow Wilson that his
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Speaker 2: boyhood home is in my hometown of Augusta, Georgia. And
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Speaker 2: Ben and I just took a little quick trip to
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Speaker 2: New York to hang out with our buddy A. J.
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Speaker 1: Jacobs.
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Speaker 2: Congratulations to AJ by the way, Bahamas the Puzzler on
7:16
Speaker 2: his new book, The Year of Living Constitutionally. We got
7:18
Speaker 2: to go to a really cool event that his publishing
7:21
Speaker 2: company put on at the oldest tavern I believe in
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Speaker 2: New York City, Frances where George Washington hung out and
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Speaker 2: got tanked back in the day.
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Speaker 1: But while I was.
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Speaker 2: Wandering around with the good friend of the Show and
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Speaker 2: of You and I Ben Matt Riddle, we just randomly
7:37
Speaker 2: were in the neighborhood where Theodore Roosevelt's boyhood home was,
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Speaker 2: and we took a tour and it's considered it's actually
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Speaker 2: overseen by the National Park Service, so we got a
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Speaker 2: tour from an actual facts park ranger in like a
7:51
Speaker 2: New York brownstone which just seemed so weird, but they
7:54
Speaker 2: rebuilt it, renovated it a lot of it from memory actually,
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Speaker 2: and you can actually go into all the rooms. Really
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Speaker 2: was like traveling back in time. Super cool like gas
8:03
Speaker 2: lights type fixtures and all of the old furniture and wallpaper,
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Speaker 2: and it was really cool. So if anyone's ever in
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Speaker 2: that area, I highly recommend checking out the Teddy Roosevelt
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Speaker 2: boyhood home.
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Speaker 1: Nice. Was there a typewriter in there?
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Speaker 2: Don't think I saw a typewriter, But they did have
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Speaker 2: these washing basins because they didn't have running water. They
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Speaker 2: had like an outhouse. And one thing the tour guide
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Speaker 2: pointed out was the difference between being rich and poor
8:27
Speaker 2: in New York was how many people you had to
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Speaker 2: share your outhouse with. So if you were rich, it
8:31
Speaker 2: would just be the family. If you live in like
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Speaker 2: a tenement type space, you know, at like an old
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Speaker 2: school apartment complex, you might be sharing your outhouse with
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Speaker 2: hundreds of people, which would not be very pleasant.
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Speaker 1: And this is the world in which Christopher Latham Shoals
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Speaker 1: and Carlos Glinton and Samuelsoul were attempting to create this
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Speaker 1: stunning new, very weird invention. This guy, James Densmore, encourages
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Speaker 1: the improvements on the prototype typewriter design. He also buys
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Speaker 1: out Carlos Glinden and Christopher Latham Shoals shares in this
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Speaker 1: great enterprise. Then Densmore runs to another guy, a guy
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Speaker 1: named George Washington Yost. Yosts I'm not.
9:18
Speaker 2: Familiar with familiar with Yoss, and the two of them
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Speaker 2: then connected with E. Remington and sons, who were looking
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Speaker 2: to kind of diversify their portfolio find new revenue streams
9:34
Speaker 2: after the Civil War when they because again Remington, they
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Speaker 2: did in fact manufacture firearms. And after the war wrapped up,
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Speaker 2: this is not quite as hot a market as it
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Speaker 2: had been. I'm sure people were still buying straps, but
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Speaker 2: they wanted to sell some other stuff that was maybe
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Speaker 2: a little bit more for the peaceful citizens, thereby being
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Speaker 2: interested in something that could be a communication tool.
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Speaker 1: Yes, towards the plowshares. Quite literally, they had the they
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Speaker 1: had the manufacturing capabilities that you mentioned earlier machine stuff, right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: they already had the infrastructure and the factories and the
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Speaker 1: ability to machine small parts. They had at this time
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Speaker 1: begun making sewing machines as well. Take that singer. They said, yeah,
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Speaker 1: well we'll make whatever.
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Speaker 3: You know.
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Speaker 1: We gotta we've got to keep our factories running, so
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Speaker 1: we'll make your weird typing device. And in an unsurprising move,
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Speaker 1: the ancestor of the modern typewriter, the very first typewriter
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Speaker 1: looked a heck of a lot like a sewing machine.
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Speaker 2: It is wild looking, dude, It's like a it looks
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Speaker 2: like something out of Hell Raiser.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't look like an invention. It looks like a
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Speaker 1: contraption like Doctor SEUs.
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Speaker 2: It's like a sphere or a half sphere with these
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Speaker 2: kind of protruding buttons on these long kind of stalks
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Speaker 2: with letters on them, but they weren't in a row
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Speaker 2: per se. It was almost this like weird like the
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Speaker 2: spherical array.
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Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, yeah, astute description. And I see on the
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Speaker 1: Hell Raisers stuff it looks pinheady. Yeah, it looks cinamitic,
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Speaker 1: so sinnabetic, yeah, like a cinemat So the the inventors
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Speaker 1: didn't want to use a querity layout. They originally, as
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Speaker 1: they were refining this idea and making it look less hellish,
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Speaker 1: they originally wanted to have a two row keyboard with
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Speaker 1: the letters in straight up alphabetical order ABCD all the
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Speaker 1: way to Z. The actual Querity keyboard was not patented
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Speaker 1: until a few years later eighteen seventy eight. Remington's first
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Speaker 1: typewriters were already on the market, and they kind of sucked. Guys.
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Speaker 1: Quick backtrack my mistake.
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Speaker 2: The thing I was just mean Ben and I were
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Speaker 2: describing was not the Remington typewriter. It was actually a
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Speaker 2: preda cessor to the Revings ten that came out in
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Speaker 2: eighteen seventy called the Ramus Mailing Hansen writing Ball that
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Speaker 2: came out in eighteen seventy, and the writing ball is
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Speaker 2: an appropriate description of this thing we describe. The Remington
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Speaker 2: model totally looked like a like a sewing machine. It
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Speaker 2: was even mounted on that same stand that had the
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Speaker 2: little foot control, which they must have just had, I
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Speaker 2: guess lying around. I don't know if the foot controller
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Speaker 2: was the reset like you know, you'd pull the thing back,
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Speaker 2: or what it actually functioned as, but it sure looked
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Speaker 2: like they were just using the parts they already had
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Speaker 2: to design the shoals in glidden typewriter.
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Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And thank you for that clarification on
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Speaker 1: the writing ball, which is neat and maybe coming back
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Speaker 1: so invest now, but I think you're absolutely on the money.
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Speaker 3: There, man.
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Speaker 1: I believe that they had extra parts, extra components from
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Speaker 1: their sewing machines, and we're looking around and saying, well,
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Speaker 1: we got to do something with these pedals exactly.
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Speaker 2: It's really a very what's the word kind of elegant design,
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Speaker 2: if probably not as efficient as typewriters.
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Speaker 1: Went on to become Yeah, here's the problem. Speaking of efficiency,
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Speaker 1: the Remington typewriters are already on the market. The Querity
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Speaker 1: keyboard comes later. The issue is this. The machines that
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Speaker 1: Remington is selling use a mechanism wherein each key on
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Speaker 1: the keyboard connects to a metal bar with the corresponding letter.
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Speaker 1: You can see this in any typewriter layout today. And
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Speaker 1: when you hit the key, then a linkage swings that
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Speaker 1: bar into a ribbon that is just drenched in ink,
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Speaker 1: stamps it on that paper. Right, that's it, It's exactly
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Speaker 1: what it does. It hits a stamp. This is an
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Speaker 1: automated stamping machine. It creates an impression of the character
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Speaker 1: into the paper, which is of course behind the tape.
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Speaker 1: And then the bar like you hit B and then
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Speaker 1: kitching B hits the paper or hits the ribbon, which
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Speaker 1: puts the ink on the paper, and then B swings
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Speaker 1: back and it settles into place in theory until you
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Speaker 1: press that key again. Max, can we get a typewriter sound?
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Speaker 1: I don't love that.
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Speaker 2: It's such a satisfying sound. I mean it truly is.
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Speaker 1: Now hit us with a ding onto the next line.
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Speaker 2: Wait did we jam? Oh no, we're jamming jammed. This
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Speaker 2: is a history jam.
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Speaker 1: I said, did we jammed? That's just a typo for
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Speaker 1: the show, and that leads us to the problem. Though
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Speaker 1: the problem is pretty apparent pretty quickly.
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Speaker 2: The faster someone typed, the less time there was for
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Speaker 2: those little metal bars to swing back into his position.
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Speaker 2: So there would essentially be a lag that, when typed
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Speaker 2: sufficiently fast on, these machines would jam like not in
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Speaker 2: the cool, you know, fish kind of way, like literally
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Speaker 2: catch like run into each other, or they would just
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Speaker 2: become it would be like too much input and not
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Speaker 2: enough time for it to catch up essentially, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Because now you have one of the bars for
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Speaker 1: one letter swinging forward while another bar is already still
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Speaker 1: on the page right or on its way back to
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Speaker 1: its resting position. This is when the typewriter jams. And
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Speaker 1: this still happens with typewriters today, especially if you're typing
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Speaker 1: at a furious, you know, all work and no play
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Speaker 1: type cadence. But the popular story goes that Shoals created
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Speaker 1: the querity keyboard layout by purposely making it inefficient, putting
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Speaker 1: the most commonly used letters in hard to reach spots
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Speaker 1: to slow typers down and reduce the likelihood of jamming
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Speaker 1: the typewriter, And isn't that funny?
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Speaker 2: Ben, you picked a very appropriate subtitle for this episode.
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Speaker 2: That's just the way it is, you know, I remember
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Speaker 2: that will never be the same always. It's a perfect
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Speaker 2: example of a thing that was created to solve a
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Speaker 2: problem back in the day and has just stuck around
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Speaker 2: because of just that critical mass of history and people
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Speaker 2: being you know, sort of averse to change. But it's
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Speaker 2: it was designed to solve a problem that no longer exists. Yes,
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Speaker 2: and it was a system that was purposefullly inefficient, and
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Speaker 2: yet so many people have learned to type on this
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Speaker 2: purposefully inefficient system that nobody wants to change it. Again,
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Speaker 2: there are alternatives, but nobody wants to relearn to type.
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Speaker 1: And we'll talk about the whole idea.
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Speaker 2: Of how I'm learned to type, whether by just feel
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Speaker 2: or by taking what is it mayb Us Beacon type
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Speaker 2: courses or what have you.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're right, and we are a gentleman of
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Speaker 1: a certain age, so we problem roll. Yeah, we probably
17:16
Speaker 1: did have homebro and typing classes. It's a weird one
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Speaker 1: and it could be intimidating to some people because again,
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Speaker 1: the querity keyboard makes zero sense. It's a little quirdy,
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Speaker 1: you know, I do like the idea of American English
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Speaker 1: and querity and making it a verb or descriptor.
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Speaker 2: You really courtied that now it makes me think of quirky,
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Speaker 2: because that's what it is.
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Speaker 1: I mean, it's a little.
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Speaker 2: Purposefully odd in order to solve a problem of mechanical parts.
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Speaker 2: That is so not even a thing anymore. There is, however,
17:57
Speaker 2: more to the story. The actual fact, to quote a
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Speaker 2: Lauren Vogel bombasm of quirty was probably not Shoals at all,
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Speaker 2: but densmore, and the layout was most likely created so
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Speaker 2: that common two letter combinations were on opposite sides of
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Speaker 2: the keyboards or between the typists two hands, and this
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Speaker 2: version of the story would lean more towards the efficiency
18:24
Speaker 2: side of things. So, whatever you believe to be the case,
18:28
Speaker 2: this is this one of those history mysteries. We're not
18:31
Speaker 2: one hundred percent locked in on which one is the truth,
18:33
Speaker 2: and both have you know, credence.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the truth is somewhere in the middle, most likely
18:40
Speaker 1: between the type of hands. Yeah, there we are. And
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Speaker 1: it wasn't too too long before other folks looked at
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Speaker 1: this querity keyboard and thought, come on, come on, surely
18:52
Speaker 1: we can do better. This led to the most well
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Speaker 1: known keyboard layout alternative, the divorce keyboard DVO R a K.
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Speaker 1: And this is not named necessarily because of the layout
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Speaker 1: of the letters. This is named for its inventor, August
19:12
Speaker 1: de Vorjac, formerly the director of research at the University
19:17
Speaker 1: of Washington, and in the nineteen forties he was a
19:21
Speaker 1: lieutenant commander with the US Navy Reserve and they got
19:26
Speaker 1: super into the weeds on keyboards. Man, there's not an
19:30
Speaker 1: unnerdy way to say this. He got together, he put
19:33
Speaker 1: together like an ocean's eleven team of engineers, and they
19:38
Speaker 1: basically played anagrams and they rearranged all the different letters
19:43
Speaker 1: and the symbols you would use on a keyboard. And
19:46
Speaker 1: they went through like two hundred and fifty different variations
19:50
Speaker 1: trying to find something better than querity.
19:54
Speaker 2: And in case any of you classical music buffs out
19:57
Speaker 2: there wondering, August Divorcee was distantly related to the check
20:02
Speaker 2: composer ANTHONYE. Divorce Ack Nice.
20:06
Speaker 1: Just in case.
20:07
Speaker 2: Anyone was In case that was a burning question in
20:10
Speaker 2: anyone's mind.
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Speaker 1: Yes, sleep well, folks, now the question has been answered.
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Speaker 1: This crack team of nerds figured out that Querity was
20:21
Speaker 1: one of the worst possible keyboard layout designs. If you
20:26
Speaker 1: were trying to make an inefficient keyboard, then you hit
20:30
Speaker 1: a real winner with Querity. That a better worst job,
20:33
Speaker 1: right exactly. Yeah, just like a Plan nine from outer
20:38
Speaker 1: space or the room. They are perfect storms of awfulness. Yes,
20:43
Speaker 1: and this makes us think of the Querity keyboard the
20:47
Speaker 1: ed wood of keyboards. More than fifty percent of typing
20:51
Speaker 1: on your average Quarity keyboard goes to your left hand.
20:56
Speaker 1: Many many common words are typed entirely with the left
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Speaker 1: and it's something that a lot of us don't notice
21:03
Speaker 1: until you have an injury to your left hand, you know,
21:06
Speaker 1: being left handed.
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Speaker 2: I do tend to wonder if this makes it easier
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Speaker 2: for me this layout, because I've never really thought about that.
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Speaker 1: But now that I'm thinking about it.
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Speaker 2: My left hand is a whole lot more dexterous than
21:20
Speaker 2: my right in general. And I never did take any
21:23
Speaker 2: of those typing classes, but I've always been a pretty
21:25
Speaker 2: zippy typer, and I'm realizing now that I'm thinking on it. Yeah,
21:30
Speaker 2: it's that left hand that's that's scuttling around way more
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Speaker 2: than the right. The right is almost a little filler
21:35
Speaker 2: hand that just kind of almost supplements the left.
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Speaker 1: Hand to jump in. Yeah.
21:40
Speaker 3: I agree with Thla as a fellow lefty that yeah,
21:43
Speaker 3: I never thought about their way. Side note Editing a
21:46
Speaker 3: podcast is a very right handed game.
21:49
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and also use hockeys unless you programm in
21:53
Speaker 1: those jk els, I got that, are you? Jkl? That's
21:56
Speaker 1: all right hand? Guys still give away the magic.
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Speaker 2: Oh what am I thinking? It's totally right hand? I've
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Speaker 2: actually changed it to my left hand. So I use ASD.
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Speaker 3: I know this because I, as you guys know, I
22:09
Speaker 3: broke my writ right right over Christmas.
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Speaker 1: Right. I was alluding to this in a way. Yes. Also,
22:15
Speaker 1: here's the way to think about typing on a Querity
22:18
Speaker 1: keyboard for any hip hop fans, if you're familiar with migos,
22:22
Speaker 1: your left hand is the person who's actually wrapping, and
22:26
Speaker 1: your right hand is the person who's doing the ad libs,
22:30
Speaker 1: who's just going in and saying skirt. Yeah. So this
22:36
Speaker 1: this is weird to divorce act because in his view,
22:41
Speaker 1: most people are right handed. That's statistically true, and the
22:45
Speaker 1: keyboard as it's laid out under Querity gives too much
22:49
Speaker 1: work to the non dominant hand. In his opinion. His
22:53
Speaker 1: team of engineers also said, look at how often typer's
22:58
Speaker 1: fingers have to leave that home row of keys to
23:02
Speaker 1: reach other keys. More than three thousand words are typed
23:07
Speaker 1: entirely by the left hand, and the Vorzac took that personally.
23:12
Speaker 1: So he proved the quality of the Querity keyboard. He
23:17
Speaker 1: created his own alternative design. He said, I've looked at
23:22
Speaker 1: the evidence about how often certain letters are used and
23:26
Speaker 1: how frequently some common words are typed. Do you here's
23:31
Speaker 1: a fun riddle for everyone playing along at home, folks.
23:36
Speaker 1: Can you guess what is the most common word in
23:40
Speaker 1: the English language.
23:43
Speaker 2: It's probably some sort of article, maybe, right.
23:46
Speaker 1: What is the most common word in the English language? Yeah?
23:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's to me entirely typable with the
23:55
Speaker 2: left and no only that's that's the only way you
23:57
Speaker 2: do it. I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, you
23:59
Speaker 2: got you got me thinking about this in a whole
24:01
Speaker 2: different way. Have you guys ever seen split keyboards?
24:04
Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah, kind of.
24:05
Speaker 2: Wild, But I'm looking at them and you think of
24:07
Speaker 2: the idea of a split keyboard as someone that sort
24:09
Speaker 2: of wanted to think outside the box.
24:11
Speaker 1: Make things more ergonomic.
24:12
Speaker 2: And yet I'm looking at all these examples of split
24:14
Speaker 2: keyboards still totally quirty A totally except they split right
24:20
Speaker 2: down the middle. So you've got quirt on the left
24:23
Speaker 2: split and then starting with the Y on the right split.
24:26
Speaker 1: And you get you wail exactly. Also quirity af I
24:32
Speaker 1: like that. So this guy to Worzak, he he and
24:37
Speaker 1: his team patent his design, then call it the divorce
24:42
Speaker 1: Ac Simplified Keyboard. This is nineteen thirty six. It tries
24:46
Speaker 1: to minimize the amount of distance your fingers travel when
24:50
Speaker 1: you're typing right. So the letters that you use very often,
24:56
Speaker 1: like the valve, like E or A, they're closer to
25:00
Speaker 1: what you would call the home row to your fingers,
25:02
Speaker 1: and the letters that you would use less often, like
25:06
Speaker 1: J or something or in a different spot. He I
25:11
Speaker 1: know it sounded like a throwaway internet meme joke when
25:15
Speaker 1: I said. He took that personally, but he did write
25:19
Speaker 1: an entire article called there is a Better Typewriter. A
25:23
Speaker 1: keyboard like this became his thing. De Vorzac had a
25:28
Speaker 1: beef with queritys so as weird as it is, and
25:32
Speaker 1: he's kind of snarky. In his article he refers to
25:35
Speaker 1: querity as this so cold standard keyboard. It's just weird.
25:40
Speaker 1: I don't know why I was so mad. Yeah, that's fine.
25:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, anytime someone throws in so called, the implication is
25:46
Speaker 2: that it is so called undeservedly.
25:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody ever says so called in a good way.
25:53
Speaker 2: But alas for old Devorzac, as we've been alluding to
25:56
Speaker 2: this entire time, the quirty keyboard layout out was standardized
26:02
Speaker 2: officially by the American National Standards Institute, which I don't
26:06
Speaker 2: think I was fully aware was the thing, least by name.
26:09
Speaker 2: It sounds a little made up, but I guess it's
26:11
Speaker 2: the thing, and it seems like they got a lot
26:13
Speaker 2: of power. The cordy layout was made the standard for
26:16
Speaker 2: computer keyboards by this institution. Adding insult to injury, ben
26:22
Speaker 2: the International Organization for Standardization.
26:24
Speaker 1: Another real thing.
26:26
Speaker 2: Another real thing, they I get. Yeah, it's like this
26:30
Speaker 2: is more of a suggestion. I guess you can't really
26:33
Speaker 2: make this stuff law. It's also not the same as
26:35
Speaker 2: engineering standardizations, right, or standardizations of weights and measures. If
26:41
Speaker 2: things are standardized, you know, in the field of engineering
26:44
Speaker 2: or parts or whatever, that stuff matters. The sizes and
26:49
Speaker 2: functions of certain components, and whether electrical engineering or mechanical
26:53
Speaker 2: or what have you. They need to work for different
26:56
Speaker 2: makes and models of things, and that stuff really matters.
26:59
Speaker 2: But this idea of standardizing a keyboard layout, it really
27:03
Speaker 2: is more of a suggestion.
27:04
Speaker 1: And apparently there's.
27:05
Speaker 2: A rival standardization organization called the International Organization for Standardization,
27:12
Speaker 2: who lots of Asians.
27:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I one hundred percent. I am one hundred percent
27:18
Speaker 1: certain that these folks go absolutely nuts when they get
27:23
Speaker 1: together for a conference.
27:24
Speaker 2: Like a rumble man, you know, like like Michael Jackson
27:27
Speaker 2: beat it when they got their wrist tied together and
27:29
Speaker 2: they're like going at each other with cutlery.
27:32
Speaker 1: Imagine liking rules so much that you make it your
27:36
Speaker 1: job to be one of the people in a rival
27:40
Speaker 1: organization about rules, gonna argue.
27:43
Speaker 2: We joke about being fun at parties, little self Deprecatedly,
27:47
Speaker 2: these folks not fun at parties unless they're standardization parties.
27:51
Speaker 1: I bet, I bet they have a lot of fun
27:53
Speaker 1: at your standard party. But dantek is maybe the word
27:56
Speaker 1: that I'm searching for. It is so the International Organization
28:01
Speaker 1: for Standardization. They have a slightly different querity layout. They
28:07
Speaker 1: have maybe additional keys for what we would call diacritics
28:12
Speaker 1: like frequently used accident marks, your oomed outs to today
28:16
Speaker 1: and so on. Uh So, the question then, why are
28:20
Speaker 1: we uh as a civilization still using querity one word
28:25
Speaker 1: tradition another couple of words path dependence. Path dependence is
28:36
Speaker 1: a little bit of a wonky social science concept. It's
28:41
Speaker 1: the idea that past events or decisions can constrain later
28:47
Speaker 1: events or decisions. Yeah.
28:49
Speaker 2: I always refer to it as critical mass, you know,
28:52
Speaker 2: like you know, a past decision has over time develops
28:57
Speaker 2: this critical mass where you almost can't stop it or
29:00
Speaker 2: slow it down because it's just entrenched and it's usually
29:05
Speaker 2: just by a virtue of laziness, or alternatively, it just
29:08
Speaker 2: has branched out into connecting with so many different things
29:11
Speaker 2: over that time that changing it, even if that would
29:14
Speaker 2: be a smart choice overall, would kind of screw up
29:18
Speaker 2: a lot of other things and connections that have been
29:20
Speaker 2: made to that one kind of bad thing over time.
29:24
Speaker 1: So we see it in history all the time.
29:26
Speaker 2: It's also the reason that maybe crappy companies that started
29:29
Speaker 2: off the fact that they were the first to market,
29:31
Speaker 2: that's all it really takes to be the best, or
29:34
Speaker 2: to be like the end all, be all kind of
29:36
Speaker 2: household name of an industry is just getting there first.
29:40
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And this excellent point, folks. We see this
29:45
Speaker 1: history writ large in our local keyboards. Querity is around
29:51
Speaker 1: because it is familiar. As we mentioned earlier, multiple generations
29:55
Speaker 1: of people have grown up with this layout so much
29:59
Speaker 1: so that it is sort of baked in to English
30:03
Speaker 1: speaking culture. Most people would be baffled trying to type
30:07
Speaker 1: on an alternate keyboard layout, even if that layout was
30:11
Speaker 1: objectively more efficient. I mean, think of the countless hours
30:15
Speaker 1: of typing instruction, all the people companies and institutions that
30:19
Speaker 1: have querity baked into their everyday processes. Keyboards on computers
30:24
Speaker 1: don't need querity. They don't have the little bars hitting
30:28
Speaker 1: the little ribbons getting on the paper. Your phone doesn't
30:31
Speaker 1: need querity. It's just used because it always has been.
30:35
Speaker 2: But again, you know, there are way more alternative keyboard
30:39
Speaker 2: layouts than just divorge Act And if you so choose
30:44
Speaker 2: and want to change it out, you can do custom
30:47
Speaker 2: keyboard layouts all day long.
30:48
Speaker 1: You know, you can make your own. You can make
30:50
Speaker 1: you could make your own.
30:51
Speaker 2: My question is, especially since we have these sort of
30:53
Speaker 2: competing versions of the quirty origin story. Is it as
30:58
Speaker 2: inefficient as legend has it? You know, like because I
31:03
Speaker 2: guess to me, it's like, I don't care. I've never
31:06
Speaker 2: like been like, gosh, I'm not typing. I wish there
31:08
Speaker 2: was a better way, you know, I'm fine with it,
31:11
Speaker 2: Like I don't really think about Again, maybe it is
31:13
Speaker 2: because of my left handedness. I don't really think about
31:15
Speaker 2: it as being fatiguing or in any But also I
31:18
Speaker 2: don't type for extended periods, you know, like a like
31:22
Speaker 2: a professional typist might. So I may be in the
31:24
Speaker 2: wrong audience for this question. But what do you guys think?
31:27
Speaker 1: I like, I love, love love the made for TV
31:30
Speaker 1: advertisement idea. We're cooking here. You know, someone's trying to
31:35
Speaker 1: butterfinger a quarity keyboard and they see like a timer
31:39
Speaker 1: counting down the seconds they're losing, and they throw up
31:42
Speaker 1: their hands. You know, typewriter keys go everywhere, and they're like,
31:45
Speaker 1: there's gotta be a better way. This this is You're
31:51
Speaker 1: you're right. There is a lot of sound and fury
31:55
Speaker 1: signifying very little progress.
31:57
Speaker 2: It makes me think of you know, the layout of
31:59
Speaker 2: a traditional musical keyboard is what it is because of
32:04
Speaker 2: history as well, because of the original, you know, forte piano,
32:08
Speaker 2: and it just became kind of the law of the
32:11
Speaker 2: land in terms of like, this is what we know,
32:13
Speaker 2: this is what a musical keyboard is. But if you're
32:15
Speaker 2: a music nerd, you know you can find all kinds
32:19
Speaker 2: of other weird keyboard layouts. Like I have a MIDI
32:22
Speaker 2: controller over here that it's just a giant grid of
32:26
Speaker 2: little rubberized pads and you can play musical chords and
32:31
Speaker 2: notes on it because you can set it up to
32:33
Speaker 2: play intervals on different rows. And there are these crazy
32:37
Speaker 2: music keyboards that look even more complex than what I have,
32:40
Speaker 2: that are like these almost like spherical grids with all
32:45
Speaker 2: of these kind of ergonomically laid out keys where if
32:48
Speaker 2: people that are familiar with them and comfortable with them
32:50
Speaker 2: can play fricking Mozart on them. So really, the world
32:54
Speaker 2: is your oyster in terms of choosing which layout is
32:57
Speaker 2: best for you at this point. But when you buy
32:59
Speaker 2: a synthesizer, it's gonna come standardized with that, you know,
33:03
Speaker 2: musical black and white key's keyboard layout.
33:06
Speaker 1: I'm still on this made for TV commercial times gonna
33:10
Speaker 1: be a better way act. Now there's a limited time
33:14
Speaker 1: because this is all about humans using their hands to
33:19
Speaker 1: interact with machines, and quite soon that will no longer
33:23
Speaker 1: be a necessity.
33:24
Speaker 2: Do you remember that scene and Back to the future
33:26
Speaker 2: too with little baby Elijah Wood where Marty McFly tries
33:30
Speaker 2: to show off in the retro bar that has a
33:33
Speaker 2: retro little restaurant that's like all nineties, nineties and eighties
33:36
Speaker 2: of five rather and he's got that shoot him up
33:38
Speaker 2: Cowboy game and he's really good at it from the
33:41
Speaker 2: first movie, and he tries to impress these little kids,
33:43
Speaker 2: but his blasting with these guns and the little kid
33:45
Speaker 2: look up to him and they go, you have to
33:47
Speaker 2: use your hands. And for the longest time I didn't
33:50
Speaker 2: quite get it. But man, what a prescient little Easter
33:54
Speaker 2: egg of a joke in there. Right, it's you're absolutely
33:57
Speaker 2: right then. I mean, we are seeing things with implants
33:59
Speaker 2: like this now that are starting to get actual testing.
34:03
Speaker 2: People play in like Fortnite and stuff using their mind.
34:05
Speaker 2: Maybe not Fortnite. It was League of Legends.
34:07
Speaker 1: I want to say that one guy absolutely crushed Mario Kart. Yeah,
34:11
Speaker 1: big fans. This also, this shows us something worth thinking about.
34:18
Speaker 1: This is the question that mister McKenzie suggested this episode
34:24
Speaker 1: based upon he said, you know, how and why do
34:29
Speaker 1: these large technological innovations or shifts, How do they get adopted?
34:34
Speaker 1: Why do some shifts occur and others don't, even when
34:38
Speaker 1: there's a better option out there? And another example, by
34:42
Speaker 1: the way, spoiler for a future episode. Ask yourself this, folks,
34:46
Speaker 1: would skyscrapers have been built in Chicago where they originated
34:51
Speaker 1: if the Great Chicago Fire had not utterly wrecked the
34:55
Speaker 1: entirety of downtown.
34:56
Speaker 2: Oh, same question with Japan and all of the like
34:59
Speaker 2: rebuilding after the atomic bomb drops. You know, they were
35:02
Speaker 2: able to rebuild it in a modernist kind of image.
35:05
Speaker 2: You know, they had like a square one apocalyptic event
35:09
Speaker 2: that allowed them to rebuild in this sort of futuristic
35:12
Speaker 2: sort of I guess aesthetic.
35:14
Speaker 1: It's something that we haven't mentioned.
35:16
Speaker 2: Ben, isn't quirty pretty America centric? Surely the letters and
35:21
Speaker 2: layouts and quote unquote commonality of words in Spanish or
35:25
Speaker 2: French or German, despite using the same letter set, aren't
35:29
Speaker 2: in the same locations for those languages as they are
35:32
Speaker 2: for English.
35:32
Speaker 1: Right right. There may be additional letters added, like an
35:37
Speaker 1: inn key with a tilda over it in Spanish. They're
35:42
Speaker 1: also yeah we mentioned this is an Anglo sphere or
35:46
Speaker 1: anglocentric thing because English speakers are going to be most
35:51
Speaker 1: familiar with the Quarity keyboard. But also since English has
35:55
Speaker 1: become kind of the lingua franca of international business, the uh,
36:03
Speaker 1: most people who will mess around with English are going
36:06
Speaker 1: to be messed around with the Querity layout when they type.
36:09
Speaker 1: But to your I want to go back to your
36:11
Speaker 1: earlier point because speaking to prescients, you mentioned, hey, is
36:17
Speaker 1: divorzac better though? Is it really? How bad is querity?
36:21
Speaker 1: A lot of people did not agree with our pal
36:26
Speaker 1: Divorzac nineteen fifty six report by a doctor Earl P.
36:30
Speaker 1: Strong said, Hey, if you retrain people on the Divorzac
36:35
Speaker 1: standard keyboard, they're basically typing about as fast and about
36:42
Speaker 1: as accurately as Quarity typists. They only get better if
36:47
Speaker 1: it's a very long exercise. So the US government Powers
36:53
Speaker 1: that Be concluded in what I'm sure was a very
36:57
Speaker 1: spirited and fun meeting that they would not switched to
37:01
Speaker 1: the Divorjak keyboard layout because it would require investing in
37:06
Speaker 1: so much more new equipment and retraining literally everyone. So
37:11
Speaker 1: they said, we're just gonna stick with the thing that
37:14
Speaker 1: it kind of works.
37:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's the critical mass argument once again, right,
37:20
Speaker 2: bringing back the word ball. You know it's funny though
37:22
Speaker 2: too Ben the word ball. I just meant to mention this.
37:25
Speaker 2: I think the modern typewriter uses this weird little lettered
37:30
Speaker 2: sphere that looks kind of like the big weird or
37:34
Speaker 2: cut you know, yeah, which is sort of laid out
37:37
Speaker 2: like the physical word ball, only it's micro and you're
37:41
Speaker 2: typing on a flat thing, flat keyboard layout. But it
37:44
Speaker 2: is still maximizing the surface area and the real estate
37:49
Speaker 2: that the ribbon thing or whatever it called where the
37:51
Speaker 2: letters or stamp takes up by putting in on this
37:53
Speaker 2: weird little ball that goes inside the keyboard. I think
37:56
Speaker 2: it was an IBM product.
37:58
Speaker 1: Nice nice, And that's our show for today, folks. That
38:02
Speaker 1: is why the Querity keyboard exists. Big, big thanks to
38:07
Speaker 1: everyone involved. Special shout out first off to mister McKenzie
38:11
Speaker 1: for the suggestion big second, second special shout out Tom Hanks.
38:16
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks is basically only an actor to support his
38:19
Speaker 1: typewriter habit is he a big collector?
38:22
Speaker 2: I bet he's got some he crushes type can we
38:25
Speaker 2: really quickly? Though? For given thanks, just give thanks to
38:28
Speaker 2: some of the kind of also fun to say. Other
38:31
Speaker 2: variants of you know letter keyboard layout, including quartz.
38:37
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm yeah, Quartz Classic and a zerty These sounds
38:41
Speaker 1: like these sound like either whimsical cartoon creatures or top
38:46
Speaker 1: secret government programs.
38:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, or Colemack, which sounds a heck of a lot
38:50
Speaker 2: like a secret hidden character on Mortal Kombat.
38:52
Speaker 1: There it is. Yeah, Yeah, the list goes on. Is
38:57
Speaker 1: there another one you like? I like Maltron, Maltrod. Yeah,
39:01
Speaker 1: I know Maltrod. Excuse me, I know a guy who
39:05
Speaker 1: calls himself Maltrod maybe not to say parties. Yeah, I
39:09
Speaker 1: bet he is. Well he was what I meant anyway.
39:13
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks, I gotta say this. Tom Hanks is obsessed
39:17
Speaker 1: with typewriters. This is not a joke. He wrote a
39:19
Speaker 1: book about them. His first fiction book was a I
39:23
Speaker 1: think a collection of short stories called Uncommon Type.
39:28
Speaker 2: That's very clever. I bet he has some museum caliber
39:32
Speaker 2: pieces in his collection.
39:34
Speaker 1: And honestly it is.
39:36
Speaker 2: You know, you know, we're fans of weird museums here
39:38
Speaker 2: on Ridiculous History. Would not be surprised if there were
39:42
Speaker 2: a history of you know, the written word type museum
39:46
Speaker 2: that has some pretty wild typewriter exhibits.
39:50
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah. Also we know that Mark Twain, We know
39:55
Speaker 1: that Mark Twayne. Samuel Clemens famously lost a bunch of
40:01
Speaker 1: money backing the wrong typewriter design. He was not good
40:05
Speaker 1: at money.
40:05
Speaker 2: It's fair, isn't that? The funny thing though about that stuff?
40:08
Speaker 2: Like there was a time where even the singer model
40:10
Speaker 2: that we were talking about it was a wild gambit.
40:14
Speaker 1: Oh no, like the early days. Who's gonna use this stuff?
40:18
Speaker 2: It does appear that there is a place called the
40:20
Speaker 2: Virtual Typewriter Museum, and you know what, there's more than one.
40:24
Speaker 2: I found an article on a website called Typing Lounge
40:28
Speaker 2: with a list of ten museums where you can see
40:32
Speaker 2: crazy examples of historical typewriters, including the Liverpool Typewriter Museum,
40:37
Speaker 2: the Chestnut Ridge Typewriter Museum, and Chuck and Rich's Antique
40:41
Speaker 2: Typewriter Website.
40:43
Speaker 1: Sold Yeah, sold, Big Big takes as well to super
40:47
Speaker 1: producer mister Max Williams. Thanks to aj Bahamas Jacob, thanks
40:52
Speaker 1: to doctor Rachel big Spinach, lance Ower World expert on
40:57
Speaker 1: underwater explosions. When do we interback on this shy we've
41:00
Speaker 1: been talking about it? Hopefully soon. She has a man
41:02
Speaker 1: book out and it's an absolute banger.
41:04
Speaker 2: Are the king of esoteric nicknames that even the people
41:07
Speaker 2: themselves don't know where they come from?
41:09
Speaker 1: And I love that was her suggestion.
41:11
Speaker 2: No way, Yes, wait to spake spinach okay, fair enough,
41:14
Speaker 2: qushing up a little bit, Eves Jeff cos here in
41:17
Speaker 2: spirit soon to be here corporeally believe, if not the
41:22
Speaker 2: next episode the one after that for a really cool
41:26
Speaker 2: deep dive into her podcast on theme.
41:30
Speaker 1: Yes, uh, black stories are more than a fad or
41:33
Speaker 1: fodder for opportunistic outsiders. Eves knows them. Eves loves these stories.
41:39
Speaker 1: Eves is moved by them. They change lives, and on
41:43
Speaker 1: this podcast on Theme, they cover these stories in depth.
41:48
Speaker 1: With that, with that amazing critical interrogation, that is so
41:53
Speaker 1: Eves Jeff coo. To be quite honest, we're not blowing smokes.
41:55
Speaker 1: You know, ways harder than us. That's fair, that's fair.
42:01
Speaker 2: Well, I guess we'll see you next time, folks. For
42:10
Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
42:14
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.