Today is World Typing Day, and there’s a good chance you’ll celebrate by typing something on a keyboard. (That said, Dad: I’m going to need more than that thumbs-up emoji.)
Here are some fun facts about keyboards:
1. Typewriting machines have been around since Christopher Latham Sholes patented one in 1868. Ever since its invention, the typewriter has contained the “QWERTY” keyboard layout.
2. The fastest typist in the world typed 216 words per minute, but the average typing speed is 41 words per minute.
3. One of the longest common words that can be spelled using JUST the top row of letters on a standard keyboard is, oddly enough,”TYPEWRITER.” (The top row also has “perpetuity,” “proprietor,” and “repertoire,” which are all the same length as “typewriter.”)
Using just the middle row, it looks like the best you can do is “alfalfa”, and the bottom row is pretty useless, since it doesn’t have any vowels.
4. The only country whose name can be typed on one row of a keyboard is “Peru.” The only U.S. state is “Alaska.”
5. “Stewardesses” is one of the longest words you can type on the QWERTY keyboard with your left hand. For your right hand, one of the longest words is “polyphony.”
6. According to one study, when you’re typing, 18% of your keyboard strokes go to the spacebar. And when you hit the spacebar, you’re doing it at the exact same moment as 600,000 other people throughout the world.
7. In the early days of typewriters, the number “1” key was clearly absent on many typewriters, because you could just use a lowercase “L”.
Early typewriters didn’t include an exclamation mark either. You’d type an apostrophe, then, backspace, then type a period.
(TouchTypeIt / WordPlays / Mr. Mrs. Vintage Typewriters / Wikipedia)
