ESSAYS 



TYPEWRITER REFORMS— THE COMBINATIONAL KEY- 

 BOARD (WUIiam WUson Nelson).' 



INTRODUCTORY 



Amongst the many mechanical inventions of the nineteenth century there 

 has been none more ingenious and useful than the Typewriter. Although 

 in point of size it cannot compare with the larger mechanical constructions 

 of last century, and it must, therefore, as an exponent of mechanical powers, 

 be reckoned amongst the minor inventions, it may nevertheless, as an 

 exponent of human faculty, be assigned a high and important rank. It is 

 no part of our purpose to speak of the skill and ingenuity that have been 

 expended on the many fine mechanical adjustments for the various kinds of 

 operation to be found in the best class of Typewriters. Viewed merely as 

 a machine, and for the work it has to do, the Typewriter at its best seems 

 to have already become mechanically perfect. 



What we are proposing to do is to deal with it from a linguistic and 

 psychological point of view, in respect of which an improvement is yet im- 

 peratively necessary and may be expected in due time. Considering that 

 the Typewriter was invented to exploit the powers of the mind, it is a curious 

 and surprising fact that, though thousands of pounds sterling and all the 

 ingenuity of genius have been devoted to the perfecting of its mechanism, 

 so little thought should have been bestowed on what is the very pulse and soul 

 of the machine, namely, an arrangement of the keyboard suited to the 

 genius of our Language. The importance of the question as to what should 

 be the most perfect arrangement of the letters of the English alphabet for 

 jdelding the greatest ease in the typing of a writer's thought cannot be over- 

 estimated. It is not too much to say that a keyboard perfect for its purpose 

 is more than the equivalent of adding new mechanical powers to the machine. 

 Why the present " Standard " keyboard, as it is called, should be so defective 

 in its literary scheme it is impossible, in the absence of precise information, 

 to say ; but it may be assumed that the original inventors being, as me- 

 chanicians, more anxiously concerned about the conception, adjustment, 

 and proper working of its mechanical parts than about the study of the habits 

 of our Language, failed to see the possibilities that lay hidden in the keyboard 

 problem, and arranged as best they could the keyboard which, through purely 

 commercial considerations, has since become the standard keyboard of all 

 Typewriters. It is certain that the real elements involved in a right solution 

 of the problem were not taken into account — with the unfortunate result 

 that those things have been done in its arrangement which ought not to have 

 been done, and those things left undone which ought to have been done. 



There is an almost infinite number of ways in which the letters of our 

 Alphabet can be grouped,^ but for typewriting purposes there can be only 



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2 Leibniz, in his De Arte Comhinatoria, states that an Alphabet 

 of 24 letters can be arranged in the following number of ways : 

 620,448,401,733,239,439,360,000. (Prof. F. Max Mueller, Lectures on the 

 Science of Language, Ed. 1888, vol. ii, p. 81.) 



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