5 Interesting Facts about Keyboards

Keyboards might not seem all that interesting to most people. Unless you are someone who takes pride in their keyboard and their typing, a keyboard might just be an afterthought in an office setting. You might think there is nothing interesting going on in the world of keyboards at all. It’s fine for you to think this, you’re just unfortunately wrong.

Keyboards are far more interesting than most people give them credit for. This quick article is going to cover 5 interesting facts that you may not have previously known about keyboards, by the end, perhaps you will realize there is more to keyboards than just typing!

#5 Keyboards are filthy!

Keyboards are filthy. They are so full of bacteria that they should probably be cleaned daily. If you knew how dirty they were, you would wash your hands after every use.

Since keyboards see so much use, and people don’t wash their hands before and after, they have become a breeding ground for bacteria. There are gaps in between each key that is perfect for little bits of dust and grime to make their way into. It is so bad, that a keyboard has more bacteria on it than a toilet seat!

To think, we regularly touch our faces while working at a computer. Would you touch your face without washing your hands after touching a toilet seat in the office? No, I highly doubt it!

After reading this, I hope you start to make more of an effort to wash your hands and face when working on a public keyboard. Bringing some antibacterial wipes to work is a good idea. Especially given the current climate!

#4 Small Space Bars

In Japan, typing can be a little tricky. They must constantly be switching between English letters (Latin) and Japanese characters. This is fine, except you now have 2 characters per key and no way to switch between the 2. Unless, of course, they added another key.

This key sits alongside the space bar and is used to quickly switch between both character sets. Great! Unfortunately, this means that the space bar must be shortened if the keys are to remain in the same position. While you might be able to type on a Japanese keyboard just fine, adjusting to this tiny space bar might be a little tricky.

Japanese space keys are about the same size as the shift key. Perhaps slightly wider. This is still noticeably bigger than your average key, but not quite as big as we are used to. As someone who has used a Japanese keyboard before, I can tell you that it’s quite frustrating to aimlessly go to hit the space bar and end up changing the character set altogether.

With anything though, its a learning curve. You’ll get there eventually, with enough practice!

#3 The problem with QWERTY

QWERTY keyboards are the most commonplace keyboard layout in the western world. They more or less work as well as can be hoped. But, there is a little known problem with this layout. It isn’t efficient at all. In fact, it is intentionally quite an inefficient layout.

You see, keyboards weren’t invented for computers. At least, their layout wasn’t. The layout of your keyboard was designed to be used for typewriters. Computer manufacturers just adopted the layout as that is the layout most people were comfortable using.

Typewriters had some major drawbacks that computers don’t. Keys pressed too fast or pressed simultaneously could easily cause a jam.

To combat this, the keyboard was laid out in a way that, in theory, would reduce the speed of the typist. This was achieved by putting commonly used letters as far apart as possible.

If you look at other keyboard layouts, such as the Dvorak and the Colemak, you will see the home row contains the vowels and other commonly used letters. While the harder to reach keys, such as the corners and bottom row, will have letters like Z, Q, and X.

If you tried to use one of these more efficient layouts on a typewriter you would see many more typos and equipment failures. However, on a keyboard, a typo is easily fixed and there’s no way for it to jam.

If it’s more efficient, why don’t we use it? Simple. People don’t like change. “Don’t fix what isn’t broke” as they say. Also, the increased speed is very small. While studies have proven that QWERTY is inefficient compared to these other layouts, It Is by such a small margin that it would be hard to convince anyone to adapt.

#2 Space bars again

Space bars again! Space bars are big for a reason, they are used very often and need to be hit comfortably from anywhere on the keyboard. But how often are they hit?

Given the average length of a word is about 5-6 letters, this means you hit the space bar about 18% of the time. This is one of the reasons that the space bar can be the first to wear out. It is also why its the loudest, the extra volume helps indicate to you that the space bar has indeed been pressed.

Since we know that 18% of all keystrokes are the space bar, we can dig a little deeper into just how often this key is used. As I’m sure you are aware, keyboards are used a lot. All over the world. There are always millions of other people typing somewhere.

Because of this, we can deduce that every time you hit the space key about 6 million other people hit the key in the same second as you did. So, if you are ever feeling lonely. Remember there are other poor suckers stuck working late at night typing away on their keyboard.

#1 Canadian keyboards

Canadian keyboards are pretty much the same as ours. They more or less have the same layout, unless of course you are living in Quebec and using a French layout.

The biggest difference and this is purely aesthetic, is that the control key is sometimes a snowflake. Unfortunately, this key doesn’t start some kind of snow mode. It doesn’t trigger any cool features, interesting functions, or do anything that a regular control key would do.

You could always change its function by reprogramming the way your computer registers keystrokes. But that’s about all you can do with it. These snowflake control keys are pretty much only found in Canada. Even Apple began manufacturing keyboards with this snowflake on. It doesn’t do anything exciting, it’s just a bit of harmless fun. Kind of like a snowball fight.

Conclusion

That wraps up the list of 5 interesting facts about keyboards. Did any of these surprise you? Shock you? Or did you already know all of these? Let us know down in the comments!

Also, if you are in the lookout for more interesting information on keyboards, or looking to purchase one, check out this great resource at Keyboard Kings. They post constantly all about computer keyboards.

Happy Typing!