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Early interface designs make me thankful for the modern-day keyboard

By Rain Noe - March 15, 2010

in Object Culture

Something I find endlessly fascinating is interface designs that didn't make the cut, the misfires and experiments created while designers floundered around looking for solutions acceptable for mass uptake. For example, the established QWERTY keyboard that we all know, like this one here,

more or less "tracks" with the keyboard on even this ancient typewriter:

But when you head over to Martin Howard's Antique Typewriters, the largest collection of these machines frm the 1880s and 1890s in Canada, you start to see the equivalent of 19th-century interface design shots-in-the-dark.

This bad boy from Brooklyn, an Automatic from 1887, had the spacebar up top--where that big-ass AUTOMATIC logo is--and only typed in capital letters, though presumably letters produced using the machine weren't presumed to be rudely shouted:

The crazy "index" typewriters, like this New American from 1906, seem painfully slow to use unless you need to type the word "Furs:"

This Yost from 1873 seems to predate the SHIFT key--it has separate buttons for upper- and lower-case:

This Morris contraption from 1885 supposedly typed 70 words a minute, but despite having a college degree I have no idea how you're meant to use it:

If I received this 1893 Blickensderfer in the mail, I'd call the company up and ask where the other half was:

Then you start getting into the stuff that looks like it was designed purely to confuse archaeologists in 200 years' time, like this 1902 Lambert:

The list, and Antique Typewriters' Flickr page, goes on and on. I've burned up at least an hour poring over the fascinating variety of designs; but I was able to type this entry up in less time than that, because I'm using one of those things in the second photo.

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discount designer purses

13 years ago

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I LOVE the one that say's "Lambert", i've never seen anything like it before! Very neat.
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ladner insurance

14 years ago

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I have to hear exactly what Henrietta says about that!!!

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Steve D

14 years ago

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The "index" typewriter is hardly random. The common suffixes -ly and -ing, and the words "of," "at," "the," and "in" are all formed by adjacent letters, while "you" and "yours" have only a short gap. The commonest letter combinations are easy to type,
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sarahbelll

14 years ago

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I just like the approach you took with this subject. It is not often that you discover a subject so concise and enlightening.
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Martin Howard

14 years ago

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Hello,

Thank you for sharing my collection of antique typewriters.

It always feels good when someone else gets enthused by these remarkable machines.

Much appreciated.

Martin Howard (Toronto)
antiquetypewriters.com
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LIsa

14 years ago

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The bad boy from Brooklyn that only types in caps...of course it was meant to shout rudely...it's from BROOKLYN, BABY!!
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Jurrian Tjeenk Willink

14 years ago

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I think you gave a nice overview of the birth of the typewriter layout. However I am a bit bothered with the fact that you present the (apple) qwerty keyboard as the best out of all these examples. As mentioned above the qwerty layout wasn't design for efficiency. But what I would like to add to this discussion is that present day keyboards lack the expressiveness and the aesthetic interaction of its mechanical predecessors. Furthermore I would like to leave with Jelte van Abbema's work, Virtureal, which shows my point I am trying to make.

http://vanabbema.net/projects/virtureal.htm

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Dionne

14 years ago

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I find it fascinating that the QWERTY keyboard layout is still used today! I wrote an interesting blog post on Performance vs Preference in that people preferred the QWERTY layout not necessarily because it was the most efficient ... http://thestrategicfirm.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/preference-%E2%89%A0-performance/
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Mabande

14 years ago

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The Morris one: don't you just pick the letter by moving the scythe-like metal arm and then hammering down on the black knob? (shifting the whole thing down on the paper)
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Tim

14 years ago

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The Blickensderfer is amazing, would love a modern keyboard like this, would make it easy to clean up the coffee spills!
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Alex Simon

14 years ago

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Absolutely fabulous machines!
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Stuart Moore

14 years ago

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Even the better designed typewriter had some negative influences on our current keyboard. Even wonder why the "!" is randomly up by the "1" and not near the other punctuation? It's because typewriters didn't have a one or exclamation key. Users typed a lowercase L instead.
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Suzanne Fischer

14 years ago

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The Lambert is pretty neat: when you press a key, the entire keyboard and typing ball swivel around to print the correct letter. Here's a video of it in action: http://www.typewritermuseum.org/collection/index.php3?machine=lambert&cat=ks
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