While a numerous section of humanity watched their swift lingers, four girl students of the University of Washington last week beat other college girls in a typewriting contest in Chicago. High school and business college girls competed. Best of all was Dorothy Dow of Cleveland's West Technical High School who did 96 words a minute. Nevertheless the University of Washington girls' performances helped their professor of education, Dr. August Dvorak, toward fortune. For Dr. Dvorak invented the arrangement of letters and symbols on the typewriter keyboards with which his students won at Chicago. The Dvorak-Dealey* Simplified Keyboard attempts 1) to make both hands do equal amounts of work while typing and 2) to prevent fingers interfering with one another. For example, by study of 35 million digraphs (two-letter combinations) in English words, Professor Dvorak & aides found that 10½ million must be stroked on the standard "Universal" Keyboard† by awkward linger reaches and hurdles. Difficult important combinations on the standard keyboard are, in order of frequency, E C and C E. S E and E S, E T and T E, N O and 0 N. The present keyboard, Professor Dvorak discovered, has many one-handed words which make the left hand do 47% more work than the right. Examples: greater, greatest, sad. saddest, safe, safer, was, were, care, dare, fare, minimum, you, in, on. On the Dvorak-Dealey keyboard no word or syllable can (he says) be written by the right hand alone, and only about ten common words and a very small number of syllables with the left hand alone. High school misspellers started the research which eventually led to the Dvorak-Dealey keyboard. Professor Dvorak about ten years ago wondered why high school typists constantly misspelled 50 common words** which first-and second-year school children know. The fault lay with the standard keyboard, he decided. Remington, Royal and Underwood have built typewriters with the Dvorak-Dealey arrangement, which the University of Washington Book Store has been vending. But the manufacturers are reluctant to put the new arrangement on the general market, for the millions of typists throughout the land have been trained at the present keyboard and human habit is a vested interest which only tremendous efforts can alter.
*Dealey, because Dr. Dvorak's brother-in-law, Professor William Learned Dealey, cooperated in the research which led to the keyboard arrangement. †Designed in 1868 by the late Christopher Latham Sholes. **Ten words most commonly misspelled by stenographers (according to Adelaide B. Hakes. technical supervisor of Katharine Gibbs School in Manhattan): procedure; lose; benefited; accommodate; adviser; occurrence; supersede; all right; principal; affect.