Bully for Brontosaurus (7 page)

So, when I compare the panda’s thumb with a typewriter keyboard, I am not attempting to derive or explain technological change by biological principles. Rather, I ask if both systems might not record common, deeper principles of organization. Biological evolution is powered by natural selection, cultural evolution by a different set of principles that I understand but dimly. But both are systems of historical change. More general principles of structure must underlie all systems that proceed through history (perhaps I now only show my own bias for intelligibility in our complex world)—and I rather suspect that the panda principle of imperfection might reside among them.

My main point, in other words, is not that typewriters are like biological evolution (for such an argument would fall right into the nonsense of false analogy), but that both keyboards and the panda’s thumb, as products of history, must be subject to some regularities governing the nature of temporal connections. As scientists, we must believe that general principles underlie structurally related systems that proceed by different overt rules. The proper unity lies not in false applications of these overt rules (like natural selection) to alien domains (like technological change), but in seeking the more general rules of structure and change themselves.

The Origin of QWERTY:
True randomness has limited power to intrude itself into the forms of organisms. Small and unimportant changes, unrelated to the working integrity of a complex creature, may drift in and out of populations by a process akin to throwing dice. But intricate structures, involving the coordination of many separate parts, must arise for an active reason—since the bounds of mathematical probability for fortuitous association are soon exceeded as the number of working parts grows.

But if complex structures must arise for a reason, history may soon overtake the original purpose—and what was once a sensible solution becomes an oddity or imperfection in the altered context of a new future. Thus, the panda’s true thumb permanently lost its ability to manipulate objects when carnivorous ancestors found a better use for this digit in the limited motions appropriate for creatures that run and claw. This altered thumb then becomes a constraint imposed by past history upon the panda’s ability to adapt in an optimal way to its new context of herbivory. The panda’s thumb, in short, becomes an emblem of its different past, a sign of history.

Similarly, QWERTY had an eminently sensible rationale in the early technology of typewriting but soon became a constraint upon faster typing as advances in construction erased the reason for QWERTY’s origin. The key (pardon the pun) to QWERTY’s origin lies in another historical vestige easily visible on the second row of letters. Note the sequence: DFGHJKL—a good stretch of the alphabet in order, with the vowels E and I removed. The original concept must have simply arrayed the letters in alphabetical order. Why were the two most common letters of this sequence removed from the most accessible home row? And why were other letters dispersed to odd positions?

Those who remember the foibles of manual typewriters (or, if as hidebound as yours truly, still use them) know that excessive speed or unevenness of stroke may cause two or more keys to jam near the striking point. You also know that if you don’t reach in and pull the keys apart, any subsequent stroke will type a repetition of the key leading the jam—as any key subsequently struck will hit the back of the jammed keys and drive them closer to the striking point.

These problems were magnified in the crude technology of early machines—and too much speed became a hazard rather than a blessing, as key jams canceled the benefits of celerity. Thus, in the great human traditions of tinkering and pragmatism, keys were moved around to find a proper balance between speed and jamming. In other words—and here comes the epitome of the tale in a phrase—QWERTY arose in order to slow down the maximal speed of typing and prevent jamming of keys. Common letters were either allotted to weak fingers or dispersed to positions requiring a long stretch from the home row.

This basic story has gotten around, thanks to short takes in
Time
and other popular magazines, but the details are enlightening, and few people have the story straight. I have asked nine typists who knew this outline of QWERTY’s origin and all (plus me for an even ten) had the same misconception. The old machines that imposed QWERTY were, we thought, of modern design—with keys in front typing a visible line on paper rolled around a platen. This leads to a minor puzzle: Key jams may be a pain in the butt, but you see them right away and can easily reach in and pull them apart. So why QWERTY?

As David points out, the prototype of QWERTY, a machine invented by C. L. Sholes in the 1860s, was quite different in form from modern typewriters. It had a flat paper carriage and did not roll paper right around the platen. Keys struck the paper invisibly from beneath, not patently from the front as in all modern typewriters. You could not view what you were typing unless you stopped to raise the carriage and inspect your product. Keys jammed frequently, but you could not see (and often did not feel) the aggregation. Thus, you might type a whole page of deathless prose and emerge only with a long string of E’s.

Sholes filed for a patent in 1867 and spent the next six years in trial-and-error efforts to improve his machine. QWERTY emerged from this period of tinkering and compromise. As another added wrinkle (and fine illustration of history’s odd quirks), R joined the top row as a last-minute entry, and for a somewhat capricious motive according to one common tale (perhaps apocryphal)—for salesmen could then impress potential buyers by smooth and rapid production of the brand name TYPE WRITER, all on one row. (Although I wonder how many sales were lost when TYPE EEEEEE appeared after a jam!)

The Survival of QWERTY:
We can all accept this story of QWERTY’s origin, but why did it persist after the introduction of the modern platen roller and front-stroke key? (The first typewriter with a fully visible printing point was introduced in 1890.) In fact, the situation is even more puzzling. I thought that alternatives to keystroke typing only became available, with the IBM electric ball, but none other than Thomas Edison filed a patent for an electric print-wheel machine as early as 1872, and L. S. Crandall marketed a writing machine without typebars in 1879. (Crandall arranged his type on a cylindrical sleeve and made the sleeve revolve to the required letter before striking the printing point.)

The 1880s were boom years for the fledgling typewriter industry, a period when a hundred flowers bloomed and a hundred schools of thought contended. Alternatives to QWERTY were touted by several companies, and both the variety of printing designs (several without typebars) and the improvement of keystroke typewriters completely removed the original rationale for QWERTY. Yet during the 1890s, more and more companies made the switch to QWERTY, which became an industry standard by the early years of our century. And QWERTY has held on stubbornly, through the introduction of the IBM Selectric and the Hollerith punch card machine to that ultimate example of its nonnecessity, the microcomputer terminal.

To understand the survival (and domination to this day) of drastically suboptimal QWERTY, we must recognize two other commonplaces of history, as applicable to life in geological time as to technology over decades—contingency and incumbency. We call a historical event—the rise of mammals or the dominance of QWERTY—contingent when it occurs as the chancy result of a long string of unpredictable antecedents, rather than as a necessary outcome of nature’s laws. Such contingent events often depend crucially upon choices from a distant past that seemed tiny and trivial at the time. Minor perturbations early in the game can nudge a process into a new pathway, with cascading consequences that produce an outcome vastly different from any alternative.

Incumbency also reinforces the stability of a pathway once the little quirks of early flexibility push a sequence into a firm channel. Suboptimal politicians often prevail nearly forever once they gain office and grab the reins of privilege, patronage, and visibility. Mammals waited 100 million years to become the dominant animals on land and only got a chance because dinosaurs succumbed during a mass extinction. If every typist in the world stopped using QWERTY tomorrow and began to learn Dvorak, we would all be winners, but who will bell the cat or start the ball rolling? (Choose your cliché, for they all record this evident truth.) Stasis is the norm for complex systems; change, when provoked at all, is usually rapid and episodic.

QWERTY’s fortunate and improbable ascent to incumbency occurred by a concatenation of circumstances, each indecisive in itself, but all probably necessary for the eventual outcome. Remington had marketed the Sholes machine with its QWERTY keyboard, but this early tie with a major firm did not secure QWERTY’s victory. Competition was tough, and no lead meant much with such small numbers in an expanding market. David estimates that only 5,000 or so QWERTY machines existed at the beginning of the 1880s.

The push to incumbency was complex and multifaceted, dependent more upon the software of teachers and promoters than upon the hardware of improving machines. Most early typists used idiosyncratic hunt-and-peck, few-fingered methods. In 1882, Ms. Longley, founder of the Shorthand and Typewriter Institute in Cincinnati, developed and began to teach the eight-finger typing that professionals use today. She happened to teach with a QWERTY keyboard, although many competing arrangements would have served her purposes as well. She also published a popular do-it-yourself pamphlet. At the same time, Remington began to set up schools for typewriting using (of course) its QWERTY standard. The QWERTY ball was rolling but this head start did not guarantee a place at the summit. Many other schools taught rival methods on different machines and might have gained an edge.

Then a crucial event in 1888 probably added the decisive increment to QWERTY’s small advantage. Longley was challenged to prove the superiority of her eight-finger method by Louis Taub, another Cincinnati typing teacher, who worked with four fingers on a rival non-QWERTY keyboard with six rows, no shift action, and (therefore) separate keys for upper-and lowercase letters. As her champion, Longley engaged Frank E. McGurrin, an experienced QWERTY typist who had given himself a decisive advantage that, apparently, no one had utilized before. He had memorized the QWERTY keyboard and could therefore operate his machine as all competent typists do today—by what we now call touch-typing. McGurrin trounced Taub in a well-advertised and well-reported public competition.

In public perception, and (more important) in the eyes of those who ran typing schools and published typing manuals, QWERTY had proved its superiority. But no such victory had really occurred. The tie of McGurrin to QWERTY was fortuitous and a good break for Longley and for Remington. We shall never know why McGurrin won, but reasons quite independent of QWERTY cry out for recognition: touch-typing over hunt-and-peck, eight fingers over four fingers, the three-row letter board with a shift key versus the six-row board with two separate keys for each letter. An array of competitions that would have tested QWERTY were never held—QWERTY versus other arrangements of letters with both contestants using eight-finger touch-typing on a three-row keyboard, or McGurrin’s method of eight-finger touch-typing on a non-QWERTY three-row keyboard versus Taub’s procedure to see whether the QWERTY arrangement (as I doubt) or McGurrin’s method (as I suspect) had secured his success.

In any case, the QWERTY steamroller now gained crucial momentum and prevailed early in our century. As touch-typing by QWERTY became the norm in America’s typing schools, rival manufacturers (especially in a rapidly expanding market) could adapt their machines more easily than people could change their habits—and the industry settled upon the wrong standard.

If Sholes had not gained his tie to Remington, if the first typist who decided to memorize a keyboard had used a non-QWERTY design, if McGurrin had a bellyache or drank too much the night before, if Longley had not been so zealous, if a hundred other perfectly possible things had happened, then I might be typing this essay with more speed and much greater economy of finger motion.

But why fret over lost optimality. History always works this way. If Montcalm had won a battle on the Plains of Abraham, perhaps I would be typing
en français
. If a portion of the African jungles had not dried to savannas, I might still be an ape up a tree. If some comets had not struck the earth (if they did) some 60 million years ago, dinosaurs might still rule the land, and all mammals would be rat-sized creatures scurrying about in the dark corners of their world. If
Pikaia
, the only chordate of the Burgess Shale, had not survived the great sorting out of body plans after the Cambrian explosion, mammals might not exist at all. If multicellular creatures had never evolved after five-sixths of life’s history had yielded nothing more complicated than an algal mat, the sun might explode a few billion years hence with no multicellular witness to the earth’s destruction.

Compared with these weighty possibilities, my indenture to QWERTY seems a small price indeed for the rewards of history. For if history were not so maddeningly quirky, we would not be here to enjoy it. Streamlined optimality contains no seeds for change. We need our odd little world, where QWERTY rules and the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
^*

Postscript

Since typing falls into the category of things that many, if not most of us, can do (like walking and chewing gum simultaneously) this essay elicited more commentary than most of my more obscure ramblings.

Some queried the central premises and logic. An interesting letter from Folsom Prison made a valid point in the tough humor of such institutions. (I receive many letters from prisoners and am always delighted by such reminders that, at least for many people, the quest for knowledge never abates, even in most uncongenial temporary domiciles):