qwerty keyboard

[′kwərd·ē kē‚bȯrd]

(engineering)

A keyboard containing the standard arrangement of letters so named after the first letters on the top alphabetic row.

QWERTY keyboard

The standard typewriter keyboard layout used throughout the world. Q, W, E, R, T and Y are the letter keys starting at the top left, alphabetic row. Designed by Christopher Sholes, who invented the typewriter, the QWERTY arrangement was organized to prevent people from typing too fast and jamming the mechanical keys. The QWERTY layout was included in the drawing for Sholes' patent application in 1878. See keyboard, AZERTY keyboard and typewriter.

QWERTY LAYOUT

     Q W E R T Y U I O P
      A S D F G H J K L ; '   Home Row
       Z X C V B N M , . /

QWERTY Goes Way Back

This Hammond Multiplex typewriter, which used a QWERTY keyboard, was offered in 1913 with two fonts that could be quickly switched. (Equipment courtesy of Dorothy Hearn.)

QWERTY Goes Way Back

This Hammond Multiplex typewriter, which used a QWERTY keyboard, was offered in 1913 with two fonts that could be quickly switched. (Equipment courtesy of Dorothy Hearn.)

They Do Jam

Even QWERTY keys could jam if the person was a careless typist.

Copyright © 1981-2025 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.

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References in periodicals archive

Externally, it appears to be a business phone with the addition of a full-travel standard typewriter keyboard and an eight-line by 80-character LCD screen.

Convergence of Voice and Data

I was addressing the letters on the standard and what I thought was the only English pre-computer typewriter keyboard, the QWERTY, which I'll bet is the one all Word Ways readers use, including Rex.

Colloquy

The standard typewriter keyboard is Exhibit A in the hottest new case against markets.

Our story concerns the history of the standard typewriter keyboard, commonly known as QWERTY, and its more recent rival, the Dvorak keyboard.

After introducing readers to Brian Arthur, one of the leading academic advocates of the view that lock-in is a problem, he states, "The Arthurian discussion of networks usually begins at the typewriter keyboard." Other prominent appearances of the QWERTY story are found in The New York Times, The Sunday Observer, The Boston Globe, and broadcast on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Typing errors

The total travel distance for similarly-sized squares laid out on a typewriter keyboard is 964564575.

Traveling around the Ouija board

He likes to cite the QWERTY system on the typewriter keyboard and the triumph of VHS over Betamax as instances where a possibly inferior technology has become enshrined by the market.

Complex questions: the new science of spontaneous order

For example, one can retain rules A through D and add two new ones: right versus left hand on a Dvorak typewriter keyboard, and odd versus even-numbered letters on a telephone dial.

Half and half words

Assuming that the thumb is your first finger, the index finger your second, and so on to the pinkie your fifth, here are the words in which each character typed on a qwerty typewriter keyboard by your nth finger appears precisely n times in the word: beebe, booboo, deeded, entente, furfur, grugru, juju, murmur, tutu

Counting with your fingers

Typewriter keyboards, which are about 11 1/2 inches wide, make it easy for workers to sit directly in front of them -- a position most experts agree is best.

The straight facts about human factors

But the men, who had little understanding of office automation and a macho aversion to typewriter keyboards, peered in a standoffish way and asked, `Oh, can it do that?'"

Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer

Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriter keyboards will have one less letter.

John Bright