A Condensed History Of The Keyboard. This in from slashdot--a little article about the history of keyboards, with some photos of the guts of some of the recent models. I'm sure I'm not the only person here who's ever opened up a keyboard for the sheer heck of it or to try to scrape the dried Dr. Pepper that keeps causing the spacebartostick. I have to admit, I'm rather disappointed in myself for never learning DVORAK. I got far enough into it to learn how to change the Windows settings, and experimented for a few weeks, but I soon realized it would be a major task (requiring intense concentration). Since I already type 100 wpm on the QWERTY, I figured that'd be good enough for any purposes I could envision.

What concerns me is how easy it would be to teach kids learning to type to use DVORAK rather than QWERTY. We need to get to them before they get too grounded in QWERTY. Ah, the power of human habit! I suppose this quest to improve typing speed with a more efficient layout is as fruitless as the Esperanto movement.