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147-458: QWERTY ( / ˈ k w ɜːr t i / KWUR -tee ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets . The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: Q W E R T Y . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sholes and Glidden typewriter sold via E. Remington and Sons from 1874. QWERTY became popular with the success of

294-461: A scancode to the operating system (OS) when a key is pressed or released. This code reports only the key's row and column, not the specific character engraved on that key. The OS converts the scancode into a specific binary character code using a "scancode to character" conversion table, called the keyboard mapping table. This means that a physical keyboard may be dynamically mapped to any layout without switching hardware components—merely by changing

441-472: A with acute accent ), Compose followed by A and then E results in æ ( ae ligature ), and Compose followed by O and then C results in © (circled c , copyright symbol ). The Compose key is supported by the X Window System (used by most Unix-like operating systems , including most Linux distributions ). Some keyboards have a key labeled "Compose", but any key can be configured to serve this function. For example,

588-631: A , e , i , o and u to produce á , é , í , ó and ú , reducing the number of sorts needed from 5 to 1. The typebars of "normal" characters struck a rod as they moved the metal character desired toward the ribbon and platen, and each rod depression moved the platen forward the width of one character. Dead keys had a typebar shaped so as not to strike the rod. In English-speaking countries, ordinary typewriters printing fixed-width characters were standardized to print six horizontal lines per vertical inch, and had either of two variants of character width, one called pica for ten characters per horizontal inch and

735-456: A US English keyboard layout. Until Windows 8 and later versions, when Microsoft separated the settings, this had the undesirable side effect of also setting the language to US English, rather than the local orthography . The US keyboard layout has a second Alt instead of the AltGr key and does not use any dead keys ; this makes it inefficient for all but a handful of languages (unless

882-419: A backspace, and a period. A semicolon (;) was produced by printing a comma (,) over a colon (:). As the backspace key is slow in simple mechanical typewriters (the carriage was heavy and optimized to move in the opposite direction), a more professional approach was to block the carriage by pressing and holding the space bar while printing all characters that needed to be in a shared position. To make this possible,

1029-508: A cylinder inside a wooden box. In 1874, the cylinder was replaced by a carriage, moving beneath the writing head. Then, in 1875, the well-known "tall model" was patented, which was the first of the writing balls that worked without electricity. Malling-Hansen attended the world exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878 and he received the first-prize for his invention at both exhibitions. The first typewriter to be commercially successful

1176-400: A dead key by default, or sometimes a normal key can temporarily be altered to function as a dead key by simultaneously holding down the secondary-shift key— AltGr or ⌥ Option : a typical example might be AltGr + 6   a will produce â (assuming the "6" key is also the "^" key). In some systems, there is no indication to the user that a dead key has been struck, so

1323-421: A firm contract for the next batch. However, Remington was engaged in merger talks, which would eventually result in the creation of Remington Rand and no executives were willing to commit to a firm order. Northeast instead decided to enter the typewriter business for itself, and in 1929 produced the first Electromatic Typewriter. In 1928, Delco , a division of General Motors , purchased Northeast Electric, and

1470-635: A key for the non-ASCII character broken bar ¦ , but lacked one for the far more commonly used ASCII character vertical bar | . It also lacked support for various diacritics used in the Welsh alphabet , and the Scots Gaelic alphabet ; and also is missing the letter yogh , ȝ, used very rarely in the Scots language . Therefore, various manufacturers have modified or extended the BS 4822 standard: Support for

1617-465: A key that would temporarily interrupt the communications line. The Break key can be used by software in several different ways, such as to switch between multiple login sessions, to terminate a program, or to interrupt a modem connection. In programming, especially old DOS-style BASIC, Pascal and C, Break is used (in conjunction with Ctrl) to stop program execution. In addition to this, Linux and variants, as well as many DOS programs, treat this combination

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1764-549: A lack of continuous, reliable electricity. The QWERTY keyboard layout , developed for typewriters in the 1870s, remains the de facto standard for English-language computer keyboards . The origins of this layout still need to be clarified. Similar typewriter keyboards, with layouts optimised for other languages and orthographies, emerged soon afterward, and their layouts have also become standard for computer keyboards in their respective markets. Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their invention

1911-631: A large number of different keyboard layouts used for different languages written in Latin script. They can be divided into three main families according to where the Q , A , Z , M , and Y keys are placed on the keyboard. These are usually named after the first six letters, for example this QWERTY layout and the AZERTY layout. In this section you will also find keyboard layouts that include some additional symbols of other languages. But they are different from layouts that were designed with

2058-446: A larger ↵ Enter key, includes £ and € signs and some rarely used EBCDIC symbols ( ¬ , ¦ ), and uses different positions for the characters @ , " , # , ~ , \ , and | . The BS 4822:1994 standard did not make any use of the AltGr key and lacked support for any non-ASCII characters other than ¬ and £ . It also assigned

2205-405: A letter with a specific diacritic. For example, on some keyboard layouts, the grave accent key ` is a dead key: in this case, striking ` and then A results in à ( a with grave accent); ` followed by ⇧ Shift + E results in È ( E with grave accent). A grave accent in isolated form can be typed by striking ` and then Space bar . A key may function as

2352-485: A lighter touch for such characters as the period or comma, which did not occupy as much area on the paper. Since an electric typewriter supplied the force to the typebar itself after the typist merely touched the key, the typewriter itself had to be designed to supply different forces for different characters. To simplify this, the most common layout for electric typewriters in the United States differed from that for

2499-424: A manual typewriter. This was imperfect, as some shifted special characters were moved one key to the left, as the number zero, although on the right, was low in code sequence. Later, when computer terminals were designed from less expensive electronic components, it was not necessary to have any bits in common between the shifted and unshifted characters on a given key. This eventually led to standards being adopted for

2646-527: A manufacturer of sewing machines ) to commercialize the machine as the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer . This was the origin of the term typewriter . Remington began production of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873, in Ilion, New York . It had a QWERTY keyboard layout, which, because of the machine's success, was slowly adopted by other typewriter manufacturers. As with most other early typewriters, because

2793-406: A modifier key is held down while another key is struck. To facilitate this, modifier keys usually come in pairs, one functionally identical key for each hand, so holding a modifier key with one hand leaves the other hand free to strike another key. An alphanumeric key labelled with only a single letter (usually the capital form) can generally be struck to type either a lower case or capital letter,

2940-412: A paragraph of text and advance an editing cursor to the start of the next available line, similar to the "carriage return" key of a typewriter. When the attached system is processing a user command line , pressing "enter" may signal that the command has been completely entered and that the system may now process it. Shift key: when one presses shift and a letter, it will capitalize the letter pressed with

3087-411: A piano-like keyboard with two rows of characters arranged alphabetically as shown below: Sholes struggled for the next five years to perfect his invention, making many trial-and-error rearrangements of the original machine's alphabetical key arrangement. The study of bigram (letter-pair) frequency by educator Amos Densmore, brother of the financial backer James Densmore , is believed to have influenced

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3234-507: A regular basis. French-speaking Canadians respectively have favoured the Canadian French keyboard layout (see French (Canada) , below). The CSA keyboard is the official multilingual keyboard layout of Canada. The United Kingdom and Ireland use a keyboard layout based on the 48-key version defined in the (now withdrawn) British Standard BS 4822. It is very similar to that of the United States, but has an AltGr key and

3381-409: A shortened left ⇧ Shift with ` and ~ in the newly created position, and in the upper left of the keyboard are § and ± instead of the traditional EBCDIC codes. The middle-row key that fits inside the return key has \ and Pipe symbol . The arrangement of the character input keys and the ⇧ Shift keys contained in this layout is specified in

3528-589: A single-stroke key for the Dutch character IJ/ij , which is usually typed by the combination of I and J . In the 1990s, there was a version with the now-obsolete florin sign (Dutch: guldenteken) for IBM PCs. In Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium ), "AZERTY" keyboards are used instead, due to influence from the French-speaking part of Belgium. See also #US-International in

3675-450: A standard US QWERTY keyboard with the sole loss the guillemet / degree sign key. Its significant difference from the US standard is that the right Alt key is reconfigured as an AltGr key that gives easy access to a further range of characters (marked in blue and red on the keyboard image. Blue indicates an alternative character that will display as typed. Red indicates a dead key :

3822-554: A type of shift key, such that one or more following characters were interpreted differently, hence the term escape sequence , which refers to a series of characters, usually preceded by the escape character . On machines running Microsoft Windows, prior to the implementation of the Windows key on keyboards, the typical practice for invoking the "start" button was to hold down the control key and press escape. This process still works in Windows 10 and 11. An "enter" key may terminate

3969-514: A very influential electric typewriter, which was imitated by computer keyboards; and the IBM PC (1981), namely the Model M (1985), which is the basis for many modern keyboard layouts. Within a community, keyboard layout is generally quite stable, due to the high training cost of touch-typing , and the resulting network effect of having a standard layout and high switching cost of retraining, and

4116-650: A workable design. Some early typing instruments include: By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need to mechanize the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphers could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, whereas a writer with a pen was limited to a maximum of 30 words per minute (the 1853 speed record). From 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production. In 1865, Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen of Denmark invented

4263-621: Is attached to a lever, and hence the offset prevents the levers from running into each other – and has been retained in most electronic keyboards. Some keyboards, such as the Kinesis or TypeMatrix , retain the QWERTY layout but arrange the keys in vertical columns, to reduce unnecessary lateral finger motion. The first computer terminals such as the Teletype were typewriters that could produce and be controlled by various computer codes. These used

4410-658: Is considered the first practical power-operated typewriter in 1914. In 1920, after returning from Army service, he produced a successful model and in 1923 turned it over to the Northeast Electric Company of Rochester for development. Northeast was interested in finding new markets for their electric motors and developed Smathers's design so that it could be marketed to typewriter manufacturers, and from 1925 Remington Electric typewriters were produced powered by Northeast's motors. After some 2,500 electric typewriters had been produced, Northeast asked Remington for

4557-479: Is especially useful when using a terminal, X11 (a Unix environment included with OS X as an install option) or MS Windows . The key can generally be used to produce a secondary mouse click as well. There is also a Fn key on modern Mac keyboards, which is used for switching between use of the F1 , F2 , etc. keys either as function keys or for other functions like media control, accessing Spotlight , controlling

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4704-450: Is reached by ⇧ Shift + 3 and the # sign by ⌥ Option + 3 , the opposite to the US layout. The € is also present and is typed with ⌥ Option + 2 . Umlauts are reached by typing ⌥ Option + U and then the vowel, and ß is reached by typing ⌥ Option + S . Newer Apple "British" keyboards use a layout that is relatively unlike either the US or traditional UK keyboard. It uses an elongated return key,

4851-479: Is slightly different from the modern layout, most notably in the absence of the numerals 0 and 1, with each of the remaining numerals shifted one position to the left of their modern counterparts. The letter M is located at the end of the third row to the right of the letter L rather than on the fourth row to the right of the N, the letters X and C are reversed, and most punctuation marks are in different positions or are missing entirely. 0 and 1 were omitted to simplify

4998-540: Is some variation between different keyboard models in the physical layout—i.e., how many keys there are and how they are positioned on the keyboard. However, differences between national layouts are mostly due to different selections and placements of symbols on the character keys. The core section of a keyboard consists of character keys, which can be used to type letters and other characters. Typically, there are three rows of keys for typing letters and punctuation , an upper row for typing digits and special symbols, and

5145-448: Is the actual positioning of keys on a keyboard. Visual layout is the arrangement of the legends (labels, markings, engravings) that appear on those keys. Functional layout is the arrangement of the key-meaning association or keyboard mapping , determined in software, of all the keys of a keyboard; it is this (rather than the legends) that determines the actual response to a key press. Modern computer keyboards are designed to send

5292-573: Is to trigger the Stop button in many web browsers and operating systems. ESC was part of the standard keyboard of the Teletype Model 33 (introduced in 1964 and used with many early minicomputers). The DEC VT50 , introduced July 1974, also had an Esc key. The TECO text editor (c. 1963) and its descendant Emacs ( c.  1985 ) use the Esc key extensively. Historically it also served as

5439-705: The Space bar on the bottom row. The positioning of the character keys is similar to the keyboard of a typewriter . Besides the character keys, a keyboard incorporates special keys that do nothing by themselves but modify the functions of other keys. For example, the ⇧ Shift key can be used to alter the output of character keys, whereas the Ctrl ( control ), Alt ( alternate ) and AltGr ( alternative graphic ) keys trigger special operations when used in concert with other keys. (Apple keyboards have differently labelled but equivalent keys, see below). Typically,

5586-464: The Ctrl , Alt and AltGr keys seen on commodity keyboards, Apple Keyboards have ⌘ Cmd ( command ) and ⌥ Option keys. The ⌥ Option key is used much like the AltGr , and the ⌘ Cmd key like the Ctrl and Alt , to access menu options and shortcuts. Macs have a Ctrl key for compatibility with programs that expect a more traditional keyboard layout. It

5733-591: The Esc key, and ⇧ Shift + ° (for ¨ , two dots ) which also works for the non-Nordic ÿ, Ü/ü, Ï/ï, and Ë/ë. These letters are not used natively in Icelandic, but may have been implemented for ease of communication in other Nordic languages. Additional diacritics may be found behind the AltGr key: AltGr + + for ˋ (freestanding grave accent, " backtick ") and AltGr + ´ for ˆ (freestanding circumflex). Keyboard layout Physical layout

5880-569: The Hansen Writing Ball , which went into commercial production in 1870 and was the first commercially sold typewriter. It was a success in Europe and was reported as being used in offices on the European continent as late as 1909. Malling-Hansen used a solenoid escapement to return the carriage on some of his models, which makes him a candidate for the title of inventor of the first "electric" typewriter. The Hansen Writing Ball

6027-523: The Latin script , the center, alphanumeric portion of the modern keyboard is most often based on the QWERTY design by Christopher Sholes . Sholes' layout was long thought to have been laid out in such a way that common two-letter combinations were placed on opposite sides of the keyboard so that his mechanical keyboard would not jam. However, evidence for this claim has often been contested. In 2012, an argument

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6174-525: The US national standard ANSI - INCITS 154-1988 (R1999) (formerly ANSI X3.154-1988 (R1999)), where this layout is called " ASCII keyboard". The complete US keyboard layout, as it is usually found, also contains the usual function keys in accordance with the international standard ISO/IEC 9995 -2, although this is not explicitly required by the US American national standard. US keyboards are used not only in

6321-608: The XO laptop , which does not have a ⇪ Caps Lock . The UNIX keyboard layout also differs in the placement of the Esc key, which is to the left of 1 . Some early keyboards experimented with using large numbers of modifier keys. The most extreme example of such a keyboard, the so-called " space-cadet keyboard " found on MIT LISP machines , had no fewer than seven modifier keys: four control keys, Ctrl , Meta , Hyper , and Super , along with three shift keys, ⇧ Shift , Top , and Front . This allowed

6468-531: The font . In 1941, IBM announced the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a typeset page, an effect that was further enhanced by including the 1937 innovation of carbon-film ribbons that produced clearer, sharper words on

6615-582: The language bar in Microsoft Windows ) that allow the user to easily switch between functional layouts. For example, a user with a Swedish keyboard who wishes to type more easily in German may switch to a functional layout intended for German—without regard to key markings. A touch typist skilled in the use of another language layout can use a keyboard with English-language legends if it is remapped to their familiar layout, because they rarely look at

6762-517: The layout of a keyboard may refer to its physical (arrangement of keys), visual (physical labeling of keys), or functional (software response to a key press or release) layout. Physical layouts only address tangible differences among keyboards. When a key is pressed, the keyboard does not send a message such as the A-key is depressed but rather the left-most main key of the home row is depressed . (Technically, each key has an internal reference number,

6909-407: The "R" key in the place previously allotted to the period key. Apocryphal claims that this change was made to let salesmen impress customers by pecking out the brand name "TYPE WRITER QUOTE" from one keyboard row is not formally substantiated. Vestiges of the original alphabetical layout remained in the " home row " sequence DFGHJKL. The modern ANSI layout is: The QWERTY layout became popular with

7056-455: The "bit-pairing" and "typewriter-pairing" forms of keyboards for computer terminals. The typewriter-pairing standard came under reconsideration, on the basis that typewriters have many different keyboard arrangements. The U.S. keyboard for the IBM PC, although it resembles the typewriter-pairing standard in most respects, differs in one significant respect: the braces are on the same two keys as

7203-530: The 'Start' (applications) menu. Keyboard layouts have evolved over time, usually alongside major technology changes. Particularly influential have been: the Sholes and Glidden typewriter (1874, also known as Remington No. 1), the first commercially successful typewriter, which introduced QWERTY ; its successor, the Remington No. 2 (1878), which introduced the shift key; the IBM Selectric (1961),

7350-418: The 'US-International' keyboard mapping is used, see below ). On the other hand, the US keyboard layout (or the similar UK layout) is occasionally used by programmers in countries where the keys for [ { are located in less convenient positions on the locally customary layout. On some keyboards the ↵ Enter is bigger than traditionally and takes up also a part of the line above, more or less

7497-590: The Bar-Let and the Corona No. 3 Typewriter have two separate shift keys, a "CAP" shift (for uppercase) and a "FIG" shift (for numbers and symbols). The Murray code was developed for a teletypewriter with a similar three-row typewriter keyboard. To facilitate typewriter use in business settings, a tab (tabulator) key was added in the late nineteenth century. Before using the key, the operator had to set mechanical "tab stops", pre-designated locations to which

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7644-515: The Czech keyboard are accessible with AltGr on the same keys where they are located on an American keyboard . In Czech QWERTZ keyboards the positions of these characters accessed through AltGr differs. Both the Danish and Norwegian keyboards include dedicated keys for the letters Å/å , Æ/æ and Ø/ø , but the placement is a little different, as the Æ and Ø keys are swapped on

7791-788: The Danish layout with added Đ ( Eth ), since the Faroe Islands are a self-governed part of the Kingdom of Denmark . This keyboard layout is commonly used in Canada by French-speaking Canadians . It is the most common layout for laptops and stand-alone keyboards aimed at the Francophone market. Unlike the AZERTY layout used in France and Belgium, it is a QWERTY layout and as such is also relatively commonly used by English speakers in

7938-469: The English language contains at least one vowel letter, but on the QWERTY keyboard only the vowel letter A is on the home row, which requires the typist's fingers to leave the home row for most words. A feature much less commented on than the order of the keys is that the keys do not form a rectangular grid, but rather each column slants diagonally. This is because of the mechanical linkages – each key

8085-627: The Netherlands below. The keyboard layout used in Estonia is virtually the same as the Swedish layout . The main difference is that the Å and ¨ keys (to the right of P ) are replaced with Ü and Õ respectively (the latter letter being the most distinguishing feature of the Estonian alphabet ). Some special symbols and dead keys are also moved around. The same as

8232-568: The No. 1 (1874)—though 1 and 0 were added later—shifted keys date in some cases to the No. 2 (1878), in other cases to the Selectric (1961), and modifier key placement largely dates to the Model M (1985); function key placement typically dates to the Model M, but varies significantly, particularly on laptops. The earliest mechanical keyboards were used in musical instruments to play particular notes. With

8379-470: The Norwegian layout. (The Finnish–Swedish keyboard is also largely similar to the Norwegian layout, but the Ø and Æ are replaced with Ö and Ä . On some systems, the Danish keyboard may allow typing Ö/ö and Ä/ä by holding the AltGr or ⌥ Option key while striking Ø and Æ , respectively.) Computers with Windows are commonly sold with ÖØÆ and ÄÆØ printed on

8526-450: The OS when connected (though the user is still able to reset this at will). Today, most keyboards use one of three different physical layouts, usually referred to as simply ISO ( ISO/IEC 9995 -2), ANSI ( ANSI - INCITS 154-1988), and JIS ( JIS X 6002-1980), referring roughly to the organizations issuing the relevant worldwide, United States, and Japanese standards, respectively. (In fact,

8673-451: The OS when connected (though the user is still able to reset this at will). A computer keyboard consists of alphanumeric or character keys for typing, modifier keys for altering the functions of other keys, navigation keys for moving the text cursor on the screen, function keys and system command keys —such as Esc and Break —for special actions, and often a numeric keypad to facilitate calculations. There

8820-461: The QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down, but rather to speed up typing. Indeed, there is evidence that, aside from the issue of jamming, placing often-used keys farther apart increases typing speed, because it encourages alternation between the hands. (On the other hand, in the German keyboard the Z has been moved between the T and the U to help type the frequent digraphs TZ and ZU in that language.) Almost every word in

8967-422: The QWERTY layout, since at the time there were ways to make a typewriter without the "up-stroke" typebar mechanism that had required it to be devised. Not only were there rival machines with "down-stroke" and "front stroke" positions that gave a visible printing point, the problem of typebar clashes could be circumvented completely: examples include Thomas Edison 's 1872 electric print-wheel device which later became

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9114-422: The QWERTY layouts and added keys such as escape Esc which had special meanings to computers. Later keyboards added function keys and arrow keys . Since the standardization of personal computers and Windows after the 1980s, most full-sized computer keyboards have followed this standard (see drawing at right). This layout has a separate numeric keypad for data entry at the right, 12 function keys across

9261-491: The Remington No. 2 of 1878 and remains in ubiquitous use. The QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes , a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Kenosha , Wisconsin . In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé . The first model constructed by Sholes used

9408-551: The Simplex Typewriter Company made index typewriters for 1/40 the price of a Remington typewriter. The index typewriter's niche appeal however soon disappeared as, on the one hand new keyboard typewriters became lighter and more portable, and on the other refurbished second-hand machines began to become available. The last widely available western index machine was the Mignon typewriter produced by AEG which

9555-514: The US and Canada (accustomed to using US standard QWERTY keyboards) for easy access to the accented letters found in some French loanwords . It can be used to type all accented French characters, as well as some from other languages, and serves all English functions as well. It is popular mainly because of its close similarity to the basic US keyboard commonly used by English-speaking Canadians and Americans and historical use of US-made typewriters by French-Canadians. It can also easily 'map' to or from

9702-654: The United States, but also in many other English-speaking places (except UK and Ireland), including India, Australia, Anglophone Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia that uses the same 26-letter alphabets as English. In many other English-speaking jurisdictions (e.g., Canada , Australia , the Caribbean nations, Hong Kong , Malaysia , India , Pakistan , Bangladesh , Singapore , New Zealand , and South Africa ), local spelling sometimes conforms more closely to British English usage, although these nations decided to use

9849-461: The United States—but before the advent of daisywheel and electronic machines—the typewriter market faced strong competition from less expensive typewriters from Asia, including Brother Industries and Silver Seiko Ltd. of Japan. In most of the early typewriters, the typebars struck upward against the paper, pressed against the bottom of the platen , so the typist could not see the text as it

9996-572: The above discrepancies between functional and visual layouts. A keyboard overlay is a plastic or paper masks that can be placed over the empty space between the keys, providing the user with the functional use of various keys. Alternatively, a user applies keyboard stickers with an extra imprinted language alphabet and adds another keyboard layout via language support options in the operating system. The visual layout of any keyboard can also be changed by simply replacing its keys or attaching labels to them, such as to change an English-language keyboard from

10143-417: The advent of the printing telegraph , a keyboard was needed to select characters. Some of the earliest printing telegraph machines either used a piano keyboard outright or a layout similar to a piano keyboard. The Hughes-Phelps printing telegraph piano keyboard laid keys A-N in left-to-right order on the black piano keys, and keys O-Z in right-to-left order on the white piano keys below. In countries using

10290-462: The area of the traditional location of the \ key. In these cases the backslash is located in alternative places. It can be situated one line above the default location, on the right of the = key. Sometimes it is placed one line below its traditional situation, on the right of the ' (in these cases the ↵ Enter key is narrower than usual on the line of its default location). It may also be two lines below its default situation on

10437-430: The array of letters, although this contribution has been called into question. Others suggest instead that the letter groupings evolved from telegraph operators' feedback. In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the latter half of the alphabet, N to Z, right-to-left. In April 1870 he arrived at a four-row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard, moving six vowel letters, A, E, I, O, U, and Y, to

10584-577: The basis for Teletype machines; Lucien Stephen Crandall 's typewriter (the second to come onto the American market in 1883) whose type was arranged on a cylindrical sleeve; the Hammond typewriter of 1885 which used a semi-circular "type-shuttle" of hardened rubber (later light metal); and the Blickensderfer typewriter of 1893 which used a type wheel. The early Blickensderfer's "Ideal" keyboard

10731-417: The basket of typebars, in which case the typewriter is described as "basket shift", or the paper-holding carriage, in which case the typewriter is described as "carriage shift". Either mechanism caused a different portion of the typebar to come in contact with the ribbon/platen. The result is that each typebar could type two different characters, cutting the number of keys and typebars in half (and simplifying

10878-583: The brackets, as their shifts. This innovation predated the IBM Personal Computer by several years. IBM adopted the 101/102 key layout on the PS/2 in 1987 (after previously using an 84-key keyboard that did not have a separate cursor and numeric keypads). Most modern keyboards basically conform to the layout specifications contained in parts 1, 2, and 5 of the international standard series ISO/IEC 9995 . These specifications were first defined by

11025-405: The carriage was designed to advance only after releasing the space bar. In the era of mechanical typewriters, combined characters such as é and õ were created by the use of dead keys for the diacritics ( ′, ~ ), which did not move the paper forward. Thus the ′ and e would be printed at the same location on the paper, creating é . There were no particular technological requirements for

11172-429: The carriage would advance when the tab key was pressed. This facilitated the typing of columns of numbers, freeing the operator from the need to manually position the carriage. The first models had one tab stop and one tab key; later ones allowed as many stops as desired, and sometimes had multiple tab keys, each of which moved the carriage a different number of spaces ahead of the decimal point (the tab stop), to facilitate

11319-537: The common QWERTY to the Dvorak layout, although for touch typists, the placement of the tactile bumps on the home keys is of more practical importance than that of the visual markings. Typewriter carriage A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys , and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against

11466-860: The compact models have 79, 78, and 80. The visual layout includes the symbols printed on the physical keycaps. Visual layouts vary by language, country, and user preference, and any one physical and functional layout can be employed with a number of different visual layouts. For example, the "ISO" keyboard layout is used throughout Europe, but typical French, German, and UK variants of physically identical keyboards appear different because they bear different legends on their keys. Even blank keyboards—with no legends—are sometimes used to learn typing skills or by user preference. Some users choose to attach custom labels on top of their keycaps. This can be, e.g., for masking foreign layouts, adding additional information such as shortcuts , learning aids, gaming controls, or solely for decorational purposes. The functional layout of

11613-409: The concept that each key was attached to a typebar that had the corresponding letter molded, in reverse, into its striking head. When a key was struck briskly and firmly, the typebar hit a ribbon (usually made of inked fabric ), making a printed mark on the paper wrapped around a cylindrical platen . The platen was mounted on a carriage that moved horizontally to the left, automatically advancing

11760-513: The cursor in the icon is not present, showing the menu only. This key was created at the same time as the Windows key. This key is normally used when the right mouse button is not present on the mouse. Some Windows public terminals do not have a Menu key on their keyboard to prevent users from right-clicking (however, in many Windows applications, a similar functionality can be invoked with the Shift+F10 keyboard shortcut ). The Windows key opens

11907-405: The design and reduce the manufacturing and maintenance costs; they were chosen specifically because they were "redundant" and could be recreated using other keys. Typists who learned on these machines learned the habit of using the uppercase letter I (or lowercase letter L ) for the digit one, and the uppercase O for the zero. The 0 key was added and standardized in its modern position early in

12054-462: The desired symbol key). The Menu key or Application key is a key found on Windows-oriented computer keyboards: on Apple keyboard the same function is provided by the Command key (labelled ⌘). It is used to launch a context menu with the keyboard rather than with the usual right mouse button. The key's symbol is usually a small icon depicting a cursor hovering above a menu. On some Samsung keyboards

12201-418: The diacritic will be applied to the next vowel typed.) In some variants, the key names are translated to French: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg use QWERTZ layouts, where the letter Z is to the right of T . The Icelandic keyboard layout is different from the standard QWERTY keyboard because the Icelandic alphabet has some special letters, most of which it shares with

12348-467: The diacritics needed for Scots Gaelic and Welsh was added to Windows and ChromeOS using a "UK-extended" setting (see below ); Linux and X11 systems have an explicit or reassigned Compose key for this purpose. The British version of the Apple Keyboard does not use the standard UK layout. Instead, some older versions have the US layout (see below) with a few differences: the £ sign

12495-414: The diacritics needed for students of other European languages. Some QWERTY keyboards have alt codes , in which holding Alt while inputting a sequence of numbers on a numeric keypad allows the entry of special characters. For example, Alt + 1 6 3 results in ú (a Latin lowercase letter u with an acute accent). Minor changes to the arrangement are made for other languages. There are

12642-516: The electric typewriter came in 1910, when Charles and Howard Krum filed a patent for the first practical teletypewriter . The Krums' machine, named the Morkrum Printing Telegraph, used a typewheel rather than individual typebars. This machine was used for the first commercial teletypewriter system on Postal Telegraph Company lines between Boston and New York City in 1910. James Fields Smathers of Kansas City invented what

12789-568: The electric typewriter was laid by the Universal Stock Ticker , invented by Thomas Edison in 1870. This device remotely printed letters and numbers on a stream of paper tape from input generated by a specially designed typewriter at the other end of a telegraph line. Some electric typewriters were patented in the 19th century, but the first machine known to be produced in series is the Cahill of 1900. Another electric typewriter

12936-508: The far left was then pressed to the right to return the carriage to its starting position and rotating the platen to advance the paper vertically. A small bell was struck a few characters before the right hand margin was reached to warn the operator to complete the word and then use the carriage-return lever. By about 1910, the "manual" or "mechanical" typewriter had reached a somewhat standardized design. There were minor variations from one manufacturer to another, but most typewriters followed

13083-602: The front side of the platen, became standard. One of the first was the Daugherty Visible, introduced in 1893, which also introduced the four-bank keyboard that became standard, although the Underwood which came out two years later was the first major typewriter with these features. A significant innovation was the shift key , introduced with the Remington No. 2 in 1878. This key physically "shifted" either

13230-418: The goal to be usable for multiple languages (see Multilingual variants ). The following sections give general descriptions of QWERTY keyboard variants along with details specific to certain operating systems. The emphasis is on Microsoft Windows. English-speaking Canadians have traditionally used the same keyboard layout as in the United States, unless they are in a position where they have to write French on

13377-415: The history of the typewriter, but the 1 and exclamation point were left off some typewriter keyboards into the 1970s. In early designs, some characters were produced by printing two symbols with the carriage in the same position. For instance, the exclamation point , which shares a key with the numeral 1 on post-mechanical keyboards, could be reproduced by using a three-stroke combination of an apostrophe,

13524-420: The index type--albeit with a very much larger index and number of type elements. Embossing tape label makers are the most common index typewriters today, and perhaps the most common typewriters of any kind still being manufactured. The platen was mounted on a carriage that moved horizontally to the left, automatically advancing the typing position, after each character was typed. The carriage-return lever at

13671-411: The internal mechanisms considerably). The obvious use for this was to allow letter keys to type both upper and lower case , but normally the number keys were also duplexed, allowing access to special symbols such as percent, % , and ampersand, & . Before the shift key, typewriters had to have a separate key and typebar for upper-case letters; in essence, the typewriter had two keyboards, one above

13818-497: The key appears dead, but in some text-entry systems the diacritical mark is displayed along with an indication that the system is waiting for another keystroke: either the base character to be marked, an additional diacritical mark, or Space bar to produce the diacritical mark in isolation. Compared with the secondary-shift modifier key, the dead-key approach may be a little more complicated, but it allows more additional letters. Using AltGr, only one or (if used simultaneously with

13965-456: The keyboard is also the same. | could also be produced by shifting the key on the left side of the keyboard. " ? are produced by shifting the same keys, but ? is mirrored to ؟ . In Arabic (102) it's true also for {} which are again mirrored. Finally, , instead of being the normal output of their keys, are produced by shifting the same keys. The typewriter came to the Czech -speaking area in

14112-449: The keyboard refers to the mapping between a physical key (such as the A key) and a consequent software event (such as the letter "A" appearing on the screen). Usually the functional layout is set (in the system configuration ) to match the visual layout of the keyboard being used, so that pressing a key will produce the expected result, corresponding to the legends on the keyboard. However, most operating systems have software (such as

14259-417: The keyboard when typing. Functional layouts can be redefined or customized within the operating system, by reconfiguring the operating system keyboard driver, or with the use of a separate software application, or by transliteration (where letters in another language get mapped to visible Latin letters on the keyboard by the way they sound). Mixed hardware-to-software keyboard extensions exist to overcome

14406-496: The keyboard. In the early part of the 20th century, a typewriter was marketed under the name Noiseless and advertised as "silent". It was developed by Wellington Parker Kidder and the first model was marketed by the Noiseless Typewriter Company in 1917. Noiseless portables sold well in the 1930s and 1940s, and noiseless standards continued to be manufactured until the 1960s. In a conventional typewriter

14553-402: The keys to be on three-quarter [ 3 ⁄ 4 , or 0.75] inch centers (about 19 mm, versus musical piano keys which are 23.5 mm or about 0.93 inches wide). 0.75 inches has turned out to be optimum for fast key entry by the average-size hand, and keyboards with this key size are called "full-sized keyboards". On a manual typewriter, the operator could press the key down with

14700-503: The late 19th century, when it was part of Austria-Hungary where German was the dominant language of administration. Therefore, Czech typewriters have the QWERTZ layout . However, with the introduction of imported computers, especially since the 1990s, the QWERTY keyboard layout is frequently used for computer keyboards. The Czech QWERTY layout differs from QWERTZ in that the characters (e.g. @ $ & and others) missing from

14847-713: The latter requiring the simultaneous holding of the ⇧ Shift key. The ⇧ Shift key is also used to type the upper of two symbols engraved on a given key, the lower being typed without using the modifier key. The Latin alphabet keyboard has a dedicated key for each of the letters A–Z, keys for punctuation and other symbols, usually a row of function keys , often a numeric keypad and some system control keys. In most languages except English, additional letters (some with diacritics ) are required and some are present as standard on each national keyboard, as appropriate for its national language. These keyboards have another modified key, labelled AltGr (alternative graphic), to

14994-493: The left hand than the right hand. Thousands of English words can be spelled using only the left hand, while only a couple of hundred words can be typed using only the right hand (the three most frequent letters in the English language, E T A , are all typed with the left hand). In addition, more typing strokes are done with the left hand in the QWERTY layout. This is helpful for left- handed people but disadvantageous for right-handed people. Contrary to popular belief,

15141-409: The modern QWERTY layout. Sholes' chief improvement was thus to lay out the keys in rows offset horizontally from each other by three-eighths, three-sixteenths, and three-eighths inches to provide room for the levers and to reduce hand-movement distance. Although it has been demonstrated that the QWERTY layout is not the most efficient layout for typing, it remains the standard. Sholes chose the size of

15288-635: The most common diacritics used in the territory where sold. For example, default keyboard mapping for the UK/Ireland keyboard has the diacritics used in Irish but these are rarely printed on the keys; but to type the accents used in Welsh and Scots Gaelic requires the use of a " UK Extended " keyboard mapping and the dead key or compose key method. This arrangement applies to Windows, ChromeOS and Linux ; macOS computers have different techniques. The US International and UK Extended mappings provide many of

15435-545: The normal shift key) two additional letters with each key, whereas using a dead key, a specific diacritic can be attached to a range of different base letters. A Compose key can be characterized as a generic dead key that may in some systems be available instead of or in addition to the more specific dead keys. It allows access to a wide range of predefined extra characters by interpreting a whole sequence of keystrokes following it. For example, striking Compose followed by ' ( apostrophe ) and then A results in á (

15582-414: The number of whose characters (sorts) was constrained by the physical limits of the machine, the number of keys required was reduced by the use of dead keys . Diacritics such as ´ ( acute accent ) would be assigned to a dead key , which did not move the platen forward, permitting another character to be imprinted at the same location; thus a single dead key such as the acute accent could be combined with

15729-429: The one most common on manual typewriters. Single-quote and double-quote, instead of being above the keys for the digits 2 and 8 respectively, were placed together on a key of their own. The underscore, another light character, replaced the asterisk above the hyphen. The ASCII communications code was designed so that characters on a mechanical teletypewriter keyboard could be laid out in a manner somewhat resembling that of

15876-410: The opposite direction. By 1900, notable typewriter manufacturers included E. Remington and Sons , IBM , Godrej , Imperial Typewriter Company , Oliver Typewriter Company , Olivetti , Royal Typewriter Company , Smith Corona , Underwood Typewriter Company , Facit , Adler , and Olympia-Werke . After the market had matured under the market dominance of large companies from Britain, Europe and

16023-425: The other elite , for twelve. This differed from the use of these terms in printing, where pica is a linear unit (approximately 1 ⁄ 6 of an inch) used for any measurement, the most common one being the height of a typeface. Some ribbons were inked in black and red stripes, each being half the width and running the entire length of the ribbon. A lever on most machines allowed switching between colors, which

16170-593: The other Nordic countries: Þ/þ, Ð/ð, Æ/æ, and Ö/ö. (Æ/æ also occurs in Norwegian, Danish and Faroese, Ð/ð in Faroese, and Ö/ö in Swedish, Finnish and Estonian. In Norwegian Ö/ö could be substituted for Ø/Ø which is the same sound/letter and is widely understood). The letters Á/á, Ý/ý, Ú/ú, Í/í, and É/é are produced by first pressing the ´ dead key and then the corresponding letter. The Nordic letters Å/å and Ä/ä can be produced by first pressing ° , located below

16317-684: The other. With the shift key, manufacturing costs (and therefore purchase price) were greatly reduced, and typist operation was simplified; both factors contributed greatly to mass adoption of the technology. Certain models further reduced the number of keys and typebars by making each key perform three functions – each typebar could type three different characters. These little three-row machines were portable and could be used by journalists. Such three-row machines were popular with WWI journalists because they were lighter and more compact than four-bank typewriters, while they could type just as fast and use just as many symbols. Such three-row machines, such as

16464-578: The otherwise redundant right-hand ⊞ Win key may, when available, be used for this purpose. This can be emulated in Windows with third party programs, for example WinCompose. Depending on the application, some keyboard keys are not used to enter a printable character but instead are interpreted by the system as a formatting, mode shift, or special commands to the system. The following examples are found on personal computer keyboards. The system request ( SysRq ) and print screen ( PrtSc or on some keyboards e.g. PrtScn ) commands often share

16611-569: The paper with a type element . Thereby, the machine produces a legible written document composed of ink and paper. By the end of the 19th century, a person who used such a device was also referred to as a type writer . The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874, but did not become common in offices in the United States until after the mid-1880s. The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It

16758-535: The physical layouts referred such as "ISO" and "ANSI" comply with the primary recommendations in the named standards, while each of these standards in fact also allows the other.) Keyboard layout in this sense may refer either to this broad categorization or to finer distinctions within these categories. For example, as of May 2008 , Apple Inc . produces ISO, ANSI, and JIS desktop keyboards, each in both extended and compact forms. The extended keyboards have 110, 109, and 112 keys (ISO, ANSI, and JIS, respectively), and

16905-424: The ribbon being struck at all. This enabled the keys to hit the paper unobstructed, and was used for cutting stencils for stencil duplicators (aka mimeograph machines). The first typewriter to have the sliding type bars (laid out horizontally like a fan) that enable a typewriter to be "noiseless" was the American made Rapid which appeared briefly on the market in 1890. The Rapid also had the remarkable ability for

17052-454: The right of a narrower than traditionally right ⇧ Shift key. Two keyboard layouts that are based on Qwerty are used in Arabic -speaking countries. Microsoft designate them as Arabic (101) and Arabic (102). In both the number line is identical to the American layout, beside ( ) being mirrored, and not including the key to the left of 1 . The \ key on the right side of

17199-506: The right of the space bar. (US keyboards just have a second Alt key in this position). It can be used to type an extra symbol in addition to the two otherwise available with an alphanumeric key, and using it simultaneously with the ⇧ Shift key usually gives access to a fourth symbol. These third-level and fourth-level symbols may be engraved on the right half of the key top, or they may be unmarked. Cyrillic alphabet and Greek alphabet keyboards have similar arrangements. Instead of

17346-409: The same as Ctrl+C. On modern keyboards, the break key is usually labeled Pause/Break. In most Microsoft Windows environments, the key combination Windows Pause brings up the system properties. The escape key (often abbreviated Esc) "nearly all of the time" signals Stop , QUIT , or let me "get out of a dialog" (or pop-up window). Another common application today of the Esc key

17493-520: The same key. SysRq was used in earlier computers as a "panic" button to recover from crashes (and it is still used in this sense to some extent by the Linux kernel ; see Magic SysRq key ). The print screen command is used to capture the entire screen and send it to the printer, but in the present, it usually puts a screenshot in the clipboard . The Break key /Pause key no longer has a well-defined purpose. Its origins go back to teleprinter users, who wanted

17640-494: The scan code, and these numbers are what is sent to the computer when a key is pressed or released.) The keyboard and the computer each have no information about what is marked on that key, and it could equally well be the letter A or the digit 9 . Historically, the user of the computer was requested to identify the functional layout of the keyboard when installing or customizing the operating system . Modern USB keyboards are plug-and-play ; they communicate their visual layout to

17787-481: The shift key. Another use is to type more symbols than appear to be available, for instance the semi-colon key is accompanied with a colon symbol on the top. To type a semi-colon, the key is pressed without pressing any other key. To type a colon, both this key and the Shift key are pressed concurrently. (Some systems make provision for users with mobility impairment by allowing the Shift key to be pressed first and then

17934-414: The software that interprets the keystrokes. Often, a user can change keyboard mapping in system settings. In addition, software may be available to modify or extend keyboard functionality. Thus the symbol shown on the physical key-top need not be the same as appears on the screen or goes into a document being typed. Modern USB keyboards are plug-and-play ; they communicate their (default) visual layout to

18081-497: The success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, the first typewriter to include both upper and lower case letters, using a ⇧ Shift key. One popular but possibly apocryphal explanation for the QWERTY arrangement is that it was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing of typebars by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther from each other inside the machine. The QWERTY layout depicted in Sholes's 1878 patent

18228-405: The top, and a cursor section to the right and center with keys for Insert , Delete , Home , End , Page Up , and Page Down with cursor arrows in an inverted-T shape. QWERTY was designed for English , a language with accents (' diacritics ') appearing only in a few words of foreign origin. The standard US keyboard has no provision for these at all; the need

18375-463: The two keys, allowing same computer hardware to be sold in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with different operating system settings. Though it is seldom used (most Dutch keyboards use US International layout), the Dutch layout uses QWERTY but has additions for the € sign, the diaresis (¨) , and the braces ({ }) as well as different locations for other symbols. An older version contained

18522-403: The type bar reaches the end of its travel simply by striking the ribbon and paper. The Noiseless, developed by Kidder, has a complex lever mechanism that decelerates the type bar mechanically before pressing it against the ribbon and paper in an attempt to dampen the noise. Although electric typewriters would not achieve widespread popularity until nearly a century later, the basic groundwork for

18669-762: The typebars strike upwards, the typist could not see the characters as they were typed. The index typewriter came into the market in the early 1880s. The index typewriter uses a pointer or stylus to choose a letter from an index. The pointer is mechanically linked so that the letter chosen could then be printed, most often by the activation of a lever. The index typewriter was briefly popular in niche markets. Although they were slower than keyboard type machines, they were mechanically simpler and lighter. They were therefore marketed as being suitable for travellers and, because they could be produced more cheaply than keyboard machines, as budget machines for users who needed to produce small quantities of typed correspondence. For example,

18816-632: The typewriter business was spun off as Electromatic Typewriters, Inc. In 1933, Electromatic was acquired by IBM , which then spent $ 1 million on a redesign of the Electromatic Typewriter, launching the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01. In 1931, an electric typewriter was introduced by Varityper Corporation. It was called the Varityper , because a narrow cylinder-like wheel could be replaced to change

18963-444: The typing of columns with numbers of different length ($ 1.00, $ 10.00, $ 100.00, etc.) Languages such as French, Spanish, and German required diacritics , special signs attached to or on top of the base letter: for example, a combination of the acute accent ´ plus e produced é ; ~ plus n produced ñ . In metal typesetting , ⟨é⟩ , ⟨ñ⟩ , and others were separate sorts . With mechanical typewriters,

19110-455: The typing position, after each character was typed. The carriage-return lever at the far left was then pressed to the right to return the carriage to its starting position and rotating the platen to advance the paper vertically. A small bell was struck a few characters before the right hand margin was reached to warn the operator to complete the word and then use the carriage-return lever. Typewriters for languages written right-to-left operate in

19257-457: The typist to have entire control of the carriage by manipulation of the keyboard alone. The two keys that achieve this are positioned at the top of the keyboard (seen in the detail image below). They are a "Lift" key that advances the paper, on the platen, to the next line and a "Return" key that causes the carriage to automatically swing back to the right, ready for one to type the new line. So an entire page could be typed without one's hands leaving

19404-528: The ubiquity of the QWERTY layout is a case study in switching costs. Nevertheless, significant market forces can result in changes (as in Turkish adoption of QWERTY), and non-core keys are more prone to change, as they are less frequently used and less subject to the lock-in of touch-typing. The main, alphanumeric portion is typically stable, while symbol keys and shifted key values change somewhat, modifier keys more so, and function keys most of all: QWERTY dates to

19551-458: The upper row as follows: In 1873 Sholes's backer, James Densmore, successfully sold the manufacturing rights for the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer to E. Remington and Sons . The keyboard layout was finalized within a few months by Remington's mechanics and was ultimately presented: After they purchased the device, Remington made several adjustments, creating a keyboard with essentially the modern QWERTY layout. These adjustments included placing

19698-728: The user group at AFNOR in 1984 working under the direction of Alain Souloumiac. Based on this work, a well-known ergonomic expert wrote a report which was adopted at the ISO Berlin meeting in 1985 and became the reference for keyboard layouts. The 104/105-key PC keyboard was born when two ⊞ Win keys and a ≣ Menu key were added on the bottom row (originally for the Microsoft Windows operating system). Newer keyboards may incorporate even further additions, such as Internet access (World Wide Web navigation) keys and multimedia (access to media players) buttons. As noted before,

19845-445: The user to type over 8000 possible characters by playing suitable "chords" with many modifier keys pressed simultaneously. A dead key is a special kind of a modifier key that, instead of being held while another key is struck, is pressed and released before the other key. The dead key does not generate a character by itself, but it modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after, typically making it possible to type

19992-454: The volume, or handling Mission Control . Fn key can be also found on smaller Windows and Linux laptops and tablets, where it serves a similar purpose. Many Unix workstations (and also home computers like the Amiga ) keyboards placed the Ctrl key to the left of the letter A , and the ⇪ Caps Lock key in the bottom left. This position of the Ctrl key is also used on

20139-407: Was advanced by two Japanese historians of technology showing that the key order on the earliest Sholes prototypes in fact followed the left-right and right-left arrangement of the contemporary Hughes-Phelps printing telegraph, described above. Later iterations diverged progressively for various technical reasons, and strong vestiges of the left-right A-N, right-left O-Z arrangement can still be seen in

20286-434: Was also non-QWERTY, instead having the sequence "DHIATENSOR" in the home row , these 10 letters being capable of composing 70% of the words in the English language. Alternating hands while typing is a desirable trait in a keyboard design. While one hand types a letter, the other hand can prepare to type the next letter, making the process faster and more efficient. In the QWERTY layout many more words can be spelled using only

20433-443: Was incremental, developed by numerous inventors working independently or in competition with each other over a series of decades. As with the automobile , the telephone, and telegraph , several people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. Historians have estimated that some form of the typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers and tinkerers tried to come up with

20580-413: Was later met by the so-called " US-International " keyboard mapping , which uses " dead keys " to type accents without having to add more physical keys. (The same principle is used in the standard US keyboard layout for macOS , but in a different way). Most European (including UK) keyboards for PCs have an AltGr key ('Alternative Graphics' key, replaces the right Alt key) that enables easy access to

20727-531: Was patented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Latham Sholes , Frank Haven Hall , Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin , although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use or even recommend it. The working prototype was made by clock-maker and machinist Matthias Schwalbach. Hall, Glidden and Soule sold their shares in the patent (US 79,265) to Densmore and Sholes, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons (then famous as

20874-500: Was produced by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company , of Stamford, Connecticut , in 1902. Like the manual Blickensderfer typewriters, it used a cylindrical typewheel rather than individual typebars. The machine was produced in several variants but apparently not a commercial success, having come to market ahead of its time, before ubiquitous electrification . The next step in the development of

21021-465: Was produced until 1934. Considered one of the very best of the index typewriters, part of the Mignon's popularity was that it featured interchangeable indexes as well as type , fonts and character sets . This is something very few keyboard machines were capable of--and only at considerable added cost. Although they were pushed out of the market in most of the world by keyboard machines, successful Japanese and Chinese typewriters typewriters are of

21168-410: Was produced with only upper-case characters. The Writing Ball was a template for inventor Frank Haven Hall to create a derivative that would produce letter prints cheaper and faster. Malling-Hansen developed his typewriter further through the 1870s and 1880s and made many improvements, but the writing head remained the same. On the first model of the writing ball from 1870, the paper was attached to

21315-402: Was typed. What was typed was not visible until a carriage return caused it to scroll into view. The difficulty with any other arrangement was ensuring the typebars fell back into place reliably when the key was released. This was eventually achieved with various ingenious mechanical designs and so-called "visible typewriters" which used frontstriking, in which the typebars struck forward against

21462-404: Was useful for bookkeeping entries where negative amounts were highlighted in red. The red color was also used on some selected characters in running text, for emphasis. When a typewriter had this facility, it could still be fitted with a solid black ribbon; the lever was then used to switch to fresh ribbon when the first stripe ran out of ink. Some typewriters also had a third position which stopped

21609-513: Was widely used by professional writers, in offices, in business correspondence in private homes, and by students preparing written assignments. Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s. After that, they began to be largely supplanted by personal computers running word processing software. Nevertheless, typewriters remain common in some parts of the world. For example, typewriters are still used in many Indian cities and towns, especially in roadside and legal offices, due to

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