{"id":1847,"date":"2014-09-17T23:55:58","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T03:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/?p=1847"},"modified":"2014-09-18T07:36:56","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T11:36:56","slug":"the-spelling-duck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/?p=1847","title":{"rendered":"The Spelling Duck"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"duckkky\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Somebody asked me today how the why OF the typewritten keyboard is laid out the way it is.<\/p>\n

Well, it has quite a history, I’ll tell of you.<\/p>\n

Most of us know it as the QWERTY keyboard.\u00a0\u00a0 It is the most popular one around today.\u00a0 I just like to say it.\u00a0 QWERTY, QWERTY.<\/p>\n

And of course, the name comes from reading the first six keys appearing on the top left letter row of the keyboard (Q, W, E, R, T, and Y) from left to right.<\/p>\n

But who in the heck came up with this crazy configuration which allows our fingers to fly across the keyboard.\u00a0 Well, it was a dude named\u00a0 Christopher Latham Sholes.<\/p>\n

Yep.\u00a0 Good ol’ Chris Sholes.\u00a0 He was a newspaper editor from Milwaukee….. in the early 1870s.\u00a0 ( A politician too.\u00a0 But his newspaper gig prompted the keyboard.)<\/p>\n

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. Soul\u00e9.\u00a0 Are you bored yet?\u00a0 Well… You can blame it on Jan Deters.<\/p>\n

ANYWAY….. The very first was sold to Remington in 1873.\u00a0\u00a0 But it was WAY different.\u00a0 It sort of hand a piano keyboard layout and looked like this:
\n– 3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
\n2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M<\/p>\n

The thing of it was… it didn’t work very well because the keys kept getting jammed up.\u00a0\u00a0 When someone typed….. the metal type bars would clash and lock if two neighboring keys were hit in succession.\u00a0 And when I say… locked up… I mean LOCKED up.\u00a0 Like Alcatraz.<\/p>\n

So.\u00a0 They had to figure out how to get around this.\u00a0 They started shifting letters around so that popular combos like “th” and “st” weren’t right on top of one another.<\/p>\n

Are you board yet?\u00a0 Again.\u00a0 Blame it on Jan Deters.
\nBut I will continue.<\/p>\n

Old Chris was relentless.\u00a0 He kept at it.\u00a0 Pecking away at it… if you will.<\/p>\n

Finally, Chris and his buddies ironed out all the hitches, and the final deal became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878.\u00a0 Sholes died in 1890… not long after the thing was finished.\u00a0 He had TB.\u00a0 That’s what killed him.<\/p>\n

And that….\u00a0 my Typewriter-Fan-Friends….\u00a0 is the deal for the QWERTY board.\u00a0 More or less.<\/p>\n

Now me…..\u00a0 I just like to waddle around the room.\u00a0 Sort of like a duck.\u00a0 Then…. in a real low voice…. I say QWERTY, QWERTY, QWERTY.<\/p>\n

It just makes me happy.\u00a0 And wouldn’t you know it…. the next day.. I type faster than ever.<\/p>\n

But now.\u00a0 HERE\u00a0 is what I want to know.\u00a0 Why is a Spelling Bee called a Bee?\u00a0 Bee’s buzz.\u00a0 And.\u00a0 Ducks go qwerty, qwerty,\u00a0 qwwwwerty.<\/p>\n

I think the contest should be called a Spelling Duck.\u00a0 For sure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0If you want to be happy, be.\u00a0 — Leo Tolstoy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somebody asked me today how the why OF the typewritten keyboard is laid out the way it is. Well, it has quite a history, I’ll tell of you. Most of us know it as the QWERTY keyboard.\u00a0\u00a0 It is the most popular one around today.\u00a0 I just like to say it.\u00a0 QWERTY, QWERTY. And of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nowyouseeit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1847"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1857,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions\/1857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}