QWERTY - Part 1 The Bell

An evolutionary tale of technology that has reinvented itself seamlessly (a 3 part series)

image @ yossarian6 / Adobe Stock

A little bit of context -

Communicating with the typewriter started in the late 19th century and for the next 100 years remained virtually unchanged in form and function. Pretty early on the layout of the keys on the typewriter came to be known as QWERTY for the top row arrangement. QWERTY remains the main layout of keyboards in the 21st century, literally 150 years since it first arrived on the scene. Few other things can claim this record from a technology perspective. The internal combustion engine, otto cycle, is probably the best known, but depending on how you consider it, there is a patent for a typewriter like machine that harks back the early 18th century.

QWERTY typewriter key layout depicted in U.S. Patent No. 207,559, issued August 27, 1878 to Christopher Sholes

From its inception the typewriter quickly became the relevant tool.Typing became a recognized and sought after skill, particularly for women, probably for the obvious discriminatory reasons. The mechanical typewriter slowly evolved over time as its mechanisms became refined, but its basic implementation remained the same. Then in the late 60s, electric typewriters came to the market. This culminated with the much recognized IBM Selectric which used an entirely different solution to how the printing took place and it brought other features to the market that until then were not easy to implement.

In the late 70s as computing came to forefront quickly, punched cards were quickly replaced by other means of getting instructions into the system. It seem a logical, natural, and relatively inexpensive, to retain the typewriter's input method as a keyboard and rather than creating something physical the backend become an electronic device. The keyboard as we know it today was born. Initially it was part of a shared terminal point and with the advent of personal computers it quickly became part of an individual toolset. Today the keyboard has been virtualized when the the Ipad conquered the market. The younger folks have no idea what to do with a mechanical typewriter but it is still beloved in some niche. Some writers find it as a befitting companion to support their creative process and the mechanical act has its own natural rhythm more attuned to how the human mind functions.

But QWERTY it still is.

Part 1 - the Bell

It must have been 1975 and I was junior at Notre Dame International in Rome. It was an international school run by the Brothers of the Holy Cross with a US high school curriculum. That year we had to choose some optional classes and while some went for the pottery class, I was intrigued by the typing class. In part i think the technology aspect made me curious and exciting. Perhaps modern vs classic. It wasn't a large class. I suppose it was constrained by the number of typewriters available. This was an all boys school and I seem to recall that my classmates in that typing class seeing it as an easy time to spend - after all how difficult can typing be if girls can do it? I had no idea what to expect but it was enough as a technology to convince me and I already loved to tinker with anything mechanical.

Corona 4 typewriter based font designed by Aleksandr Stevanov

The correct right way to learn typing is with a standard mechanical typewriter. An electric works but for learning purposes it is not the same. A mechanical typewriter requires proper posture to ensure pain free typing over time. What I mean by learning to type is the ability to use all fingers and both hand to activate the right keys while reading the material to be typed. You never look at the keys or what is being typed on the paper. The fingers do not press on the keys, it's actually kind of flicking or curling movement where the tips of the fingers activate the mechanism. This is how speed and agility is achieved. Just like when you hit a golf ball with the driver at the right soft spot and you get the sweetest of sound, the same is with typing as you hear a particular rhythm of clickety clack sound as the characters and words roll out. I was able to achieve quite a respectable character for minute or words per minute with minimal errors. I was pleased to be proficient. Many others laughed and scoffed at typing.

This illustrates the home position as a typist. The F and J keys have a bump or ridge so that you can sense if you index fingers are placed on the correct keys. Keyboards today still have this though most people probably don't know and don't make use of it.

As with other things when mind and your body provide physical articulation, you start off slow, practice in repetition, speed things up, and then you eventually reach "the zone". Although I was never knew of the studies made to understand the benefits to typing in improving language proficiency, it really did enhance in hindsight. When you start at the beginning, correlating a finger movement to its corresponding letter of the alphabet took time. Then one day rather than typing "t-h-e" it became more of a "t/h/e" blur and eventually the typing was simply "the" almost in one go. The pattern for that movement of one word became fixed and repeated subconsciously at speed. Then it became some word combinations. Then possibly common phrases of several words. The benefit was in how to spell at speed. There were some basic rules that were reinforced. A shift to capitalize the beginning of new sentence and two spaces after then of a sentence and the period. Both remain today. The latter was important because typing was basically monospace typesetting.

Then there was another challenge and another skill was required. We read left to right, but a typewriter does not print left to right by moving on the paper in that direction - it's the paper that moves. This means on paper the printing occurs right to left as words are created. Starting a new line was enough by doing a carriage return which placed the paper all the way to the left margin because it was actually the carriage that went all the way to the right. Confused? Just imagine writing in block letters but your hand stays fix and it's the paper that shifts to the left. But then how did one know that the line spaces were coming to an end? That a new carriage return would have to be done. So how was the line going to be terminated? The sentence or word at the end would simply be truncated? DING was the sound of the bell warning of the upcoming carriage end. While the bell sound could be adjusted according to one's preference and speed, it was just a reminder. Then what? Hearing the DING meant a decision had to be made rather quickly. Would there be enough for the next or current word? If not enough for the next word you simply finished the current and did a carriage return. Otherwise you had to hyphenate, and hyphenation has rules to follow. Generally with the sound of the bell, maybe you had 5 character spaces left and if you're going at speed, this goes by rather quickly. My mind had to be trained to see the word being split up by hyphenation and when moving on to the new line to remember exactly where the continuation picks up from the hyphenation. Initially upon hearing the bell, I would stop, figure out the hyphenation and then restart. Eventually I would just slow down less and less. Once I had figured out an internal dictionary of common hyphenations, I could really fly from one line to the next.

Typing "This was cool! (carriage return)" sounds like this -

(downbeat as the pinkie does a shift hold)/Click -click-click-clack-click-click-click-clack-click-click-click-click/(downbeat as the pinkie does a shift hold)click/swoosh on returning the carriage.

Little did I know nor could I have ever imagined how this skill and proficiency would serve me later. There are moments of inflections and paths that happen in our life that in the particular instance of times goes unnoticed for its contribution.

....continued in Part 2