The QWERTY keyboard has been in use for almost 150 years.
How well do you remember the positions of the keys? Adobe Stock / AOP / Janiko Kemppi
Those who type a lot on the keyboard don’t really have to look at their fingers when typing, but the places of the keys come from the spine. However, when an empty keyboard is brought in front of you, it can be challenging to find the right place for the keys.
With Iltalehti’s keyboard quiz, you can test how well you remember the position of the characters on the QWERTY keyboard. You can do the visa at the end of the story after the introduction of the history of the keyboard.
QWERTY was introduced in the 19th century
Have you ever wondered why the keys on the keyboard are in the exact order they are, and the letters don’t proceed in alphabetical order, for example?
The so-called QWERTY keyboard we use today was introduced almost 150 years ago by an engineer Christopher Lathan Sholes, who in 1873 devised a keyboard in which the letters that often appeared consecutively were on different sides of the keyboard. Before this, in the typewriter brought to the market by Sholes in 1868, the letters were in two rows in alphabetical order. This caused the machine to freeze easily when typing quickly.
Sholes offered his keyboard idea to Remington, who commercialized it and the rest is history. The QWERTY keyboard became a hit when Remington introduced a typewriter in 1878 that could write both upper and lower case letters. The name of the typewriter was Type Writer.
As the QWERTY system became more common, the ten-finger system became a common way to type. However, it’s not the most ergonomic, but the order hasn’t been changed because you’ve gotten used to it.
In Finland, the QWERTY keyboard also includes å, ä and ö. There were once two keyboard systems in use in Finland, but when the Finnish Standardization Association SFS confirmed the standard for typewriter keyboards in 1959, QWERTY became established. Until 1976, å, ä and ö were on the bottom line, after which they were moved to their current positions. A comma, a full stop and a hyphen came in their place.
In 2008, the Finnish keyboard changed a little when the Alt Gr key was introduced.
With the test below, you can test how familiar the QWERTY keyboard is to you.
Source: Finnish Standardization Association SFS ry