Having heard Dvorak's claims, but not the modern-day scientific analysis of his experiments, I decided to switch to the Dvorak layout in the late s, when computer software specifically version 10 of the X Window System made it fairly simple to remap the keyboard layout without making any hardware changes.
It took a few months for my Dvorak speed to catch up to my qwerty speed. I found the Dvorak layout to be more comfortable and less effort. For a period of four or five years, I used the qwerty layout at work on a shared DOS computer , and the Dvorak layout at home, spending about half of my typing time on each.
During that time, my Dvorak speed increased to 90 wpm, and my qwerty speed reached 80 wpm. My accuracy improved slightly on both layouts. On the Dvorak layout, my most common typos are reversing two letters, whereas on the qwerty layout, it's more common for me to hit the wrong key altogether. Note also that several people have made the claim that it's impossible to be able to switch back and forth between different keyboard layouts.
That certainly hasn't been my experience, and I'm always happy to demonstrate for non-believers. The greatest benefit I've found from the Dvorak layout is that, in addition to feeling more comfortable, the typing-related discomfort I was beginning to experience in my wrists and forearms diminished, even though the amount of typing I was doing remained constant. Once my workplace switched from DOS to Windows and I was able to use the Dvorak layout everwhere, those problems vanished and have not returned.
I believe that Dvorak's claims that his layout requires less "hurdling" over keys and less total finger travel are true, and that this is more or less directly responsible for the reduction in RSI Repetitive Strain Injury symptoms that I have experienced.
Would I recommend it to other people? Yes, particularly if you have RSI problems from typing. When you first make the switch, the unfamiliar layout will slow you down, helping your injured arms and wrists heal. Once your Dvorak speed catches up with your qwerty speed which it eventually will , you will likely find typing more comfortable or at least less uncomfortable , and it may be less likely that your RSI will recur. A few years back i was doing some very in depth research on how the human eye deals with moving images, like movies.
We obviously know that they do, but as to how it all works was still a subject of serious debate by serious people. Part of this caused by the fact that we don't deeply understand how our brain processes images. The Norwegian Dvorak layout feels well-designed, but it requires effort to get it onto your system:. Incidentally, the QWERTY keyboard was not designed to slow typists down, as suggested in that article - it was designed to physically separate commonly used combinations of letters to avoid them jamming, allowing the typist to work considerably faster.
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Dvorak said that for speed, "you can make a better one by drawing letters blindfold out of a hat" Morgan, 6. Working with his wife's brother, William Learned Dealey , a professor at North Texas State Teachers College who shared Dvorak's interest in invention, he reorganized the standard letter placement to create a board that put vowels together on one left-hand row and clustered common consonant combinations, such as cr, tr , and th , close to each other.
They applied for a patent on May 21, , and received it in The design they came up with puts most of the typist's work in the home row and reduces finger motions between rows. More than 3, common words are typed with just the home row, including the, which is the most-used word in English.
Dvorak began teaching the system in the early s, and his early students became teachers themselves in Puget Sound-area classrooms. Typing competitions were popular at the time, and between and converts to the Dvorak keyboard set 26 international records.
When the U. He put his public keyboard promotions aside, though he used navy channels to encourage the military to switch to his system. Then, while at Dan Neck, Virginia, in , he watched sailors firing and reloading mm weapons. He later told Murray Morgan that his suggested changes reduced the guns' reloading time from more than seven seconds to less than two, and the Navy promptly adopted them.
Not so with the keyboard. In the navy did take 14 clerks off their regular keyboards and retrained them on Dvorak's for two weeks, two hours a day. According to Dvorak, their speed improved, their errors fell, and the navy estimated that the costs of their training were recouped within 10 days by greater efficiency.
McDermott's recollection was that the navy decided the improvement in speed and accuracy was real, but that it wasn't worth the time, stress, and expense of changing out keyboards and retraining QWERTY typists, especially the skilled ones. Dvorak recalled that the navy considered buying 2, of his machines and distributing them among elite typists, who would make up the difference in production while new people were trained.
Then, he said, the plan was suddenly dropped. Dvorak returned to UW after the war. Typing competitions were no longer the public draw they had been, but he continued to lobby for his invention.
When the patent ran out in , he was able to get a six-year extension provided by legislation aimed at veterans. With or without the patent, he had already offered his invention to the government for free.
Eventually, with support from Dvorak-keyboard enthusiast Washington Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson , he persuaded the government's General Services Administration GSA to organize a four-month test run of his system in early "Two dozen carefully selected typists -- ranging in skill from girls who can barely poke out thirty words a minute to those who can make an upright sound like a submachine gun -- are racing against time and each other in an experiment scheduled to end in April" Morgan, 3.
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