Stephen McGinty: Thumbs down for Kalq layout

There was a rush of excitement when words and sentences and full stops and commas all came together without a mistake. Picture: Getty

It was during that strange month or so of limbo, after the O-grade exams were complete but the summer holidays hadn’t yet begun but when the timetable adopted next year’s form, that I took my seat behind the specially-designed large wooden desks whose lid, when lifted, triggered a mechanism that raised up the heavy steel manual typewriters.

It was a class I wasn’t supposed to be taking, at least, not according to my chemistry teacher, who made a point of coming up three flights of stairs to inform me that I was expected to fail and would be better off dedicating my time to re-learning the periodic table than the Qwerty keyboard. I stayed put (and passed, well, just, I got a “C”) and so was able to initiate myself into the then feminine world of the typing class.

Looking back over 25 years (what a depressing sentence to type, well, touch type actually), it seems strange that learning to type was then viewed as an entry to the world of the secretary. I was the only boy in the class, but of all the subjects I took and teachers who taught me, it is probably  Mrs Clifford’s typing class for which I am most grateful. She was one of those teachers whose enthusiasm was infectious and whose determination that her pupils succeed was like a physical force that seemed to carry one along in her wake.

That said, I can remember almost nothing about what actually occurred during those classes. I remember feeding paper into the carriage and winding it up, setting the margins and then the clatter of keys. I remember how she went around the class holding a piece of white foolscap over our hands to encourage us not to look at the keys, but to trust our judgment that our fingers would move in the right direction.

When it did finally sink in and words and sentences and full stops and commas all came together without a mistake, it was like the first time riding a bike without stabilisers – a rush of excitement and a swelling source of pride.

Mrs Clifford would arrive in the classroom carrying the future on her back. The school had recently been given a number of “portable’”Apple Macs, those early desk-top computers that fitted into a square carrying case that resembled “Dusty Bin” in size and shape. As there wasn’t yet enough to go round, we learned on manual typewriters and, in a way, I’m glad I did. We were probably one of the last classes to feel a physical connection to John Pratt, the English engineer who invented a prototype “literary piano” or “type writer” as Scientific America magazine described it when publishing his plans in 1867.

While it may have been Mr Pratt who developed the prototype, it was a newspaper man from Milwaukee who spotted the article and set about refining it. Christopher Latham Sholes was a printer and journalist who spent months developing his own version of the typewriter.

The problem was that, under his design, the letters were attached to a rod and placed in alphabetical order. However, when two keys beside each other were struck in quick succession, the rods would jam.

His business partner in the enterprise asked his son-in-law – a school superintendent – to identify the most common two-letter sequences in the English language. With this knowledge to hand, Scholes redesigned the keyboard so that these letters were separated, which meant there was now a slight delay in the rising and falling of those keys when hit sequentially. The system took its name Qwerty from the first six letters along the top row. But the alphabetical system can still be glimpsed in the second line where D-L are in alphabetical order minus the vowels.

Sholes and his partner, a Mr Glidden, sold the patent to Remington, whose primary products were guns and sewing machines. The company bolted the machine on to a sewing machine frame, with the shift key for upper case letters operated by a foot pedal.

Qwerty was also popular as it allowed salesmen to peck out “typewriter” quickly using only the top line, which appealed to potential buyers. Mark Twain bought one of the first machines made by Remington and shortly after became the first author to deliver a typewritten manuscript. (More than 100 years later, Len Deighton became the first author to deliver a manuscript typed on a word processor when in 1972 he purchased an early computer, one that necessitated the hiring of a crane and the removal of his window frame in order to have it lowered into this study. Bomber his bestseller later emerged.)

Between 1900 and 1920, various manufacturers developed differing typing systems, but it was Qwerty that became the standard. The strongest challenger emerged in 1944, when Dr August Dvorak devised a more rational keyboard in which all the vowels were placed on one side of the home row. A US government study concluded that it was indeed a faster system that resulted in less strain for the typist. However, in 1989, two academics produced a paper called The Fable of the Keys, which revealed that the US government study consisted of just 14 typists from the navy under the direction of a Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, who owned the layout patent.

Now, 70 years on, my beloved Qwerty is under attack once again. In many ways, there is no reason why keyboards should still be laid out in the manner first created in 1868 as computers have no concern for clashing keys. Another revolution has taken place. A quarter of a century ago (now that is an even more depressing sentence to touch type), few people typed. Few people had any cause to type.

If we wished to communicate we picked up a phone, stabbed a numerical keypad or spun a rotary dial and spoke to a person. If they lived far away, we wrote a letter, licked a stamp and posted it off. When I took a seat in that fourth-floor classroom in a building now long demolished, I had no idea that within a decade or so everyone would be a typist. Today, 2.8 million typewritten e-mails are sent every second.

Yet, in the past five years the keyboard has, for many, become redundant with the advent of the iPad and tablet computer. I’m typing this on a tablet computer, but I cheat. Having been raised on the physical sensation of a depressed key stroke, I can’t quite tolerate the numbness of stroking glass and so I’ve attached the tablet to a blue-tooth keyboard. Others, however, who don’t type for so long, now favour holding the device in both hands and typing with just their thumbs.

To accommodate this strange form of regression (or is it evolution: from using ten fingers to just two? I can’t quite decide), researchers at St Andrews University have developed a new layout that allows people to thumb-type 34 per cent faster. It is known as Kalq. Technically, it should be known as “Mbwh” – as that is the first four letters on the left-hand side. In fact, the team has had to go down to the last line on the right-hand side to find a vaguely pronounceable name. For this entirely spurious reason, I’ve decided that the system is doomed to failure.

I can see the reason why people might want to adopt a new typing system as they now type in different ways, but holding to the crucial maxim of “contempt prior to investigation” ,I’ve decided it will soon go the same way as Dr Dvorak’s system and those other Johnnie-come-latelys who have tried to unthrone King Qwerty.

A few technogeeks may decide to clasp it close to their icy hearts, but this will merely ensure that they belong to that group of eccentrics who favour the recumbent bicycle and adopt esperanto as their second language of choice. The “literary piano” requires all fingers to be practiced most efficiently. Kalq seems to me to be the equivalent of playing “chopsticks” and I do hope Mrs Cifford would agree.