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Originally Posted by NullNix
It's questionable whether Dvorak has any at all. At least Maltron's layout is the result of a a fairly systematic search for language-specific local layout optima (and the Glove80 is the result of a wonderfully crazy repeated physical trial process with a test rig that let them test thousands of keyboard layout variations without having to build thousands of different keyboards). Dvorak's? Nobody really knows how he came up with it except that his stated method was probably not what he actually did, and all the tests of it that he didn't personally run came out saying it was not really significantly superior to QWERTY.
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I find that statement about tests not run by Dvorak not showing a significant superiority to QWERTY a bit hard to believe since back in the bad old days when they did speed typing competitions on IBM Selectrics, the winners rather overwhelmingly used Dvorak keyboard layouts.
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On June 21, 1940, Velma Crismon (b. circa 1924), a student at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, types 113 words per minute at the International Typewriting Contest in Chicago, setting a new world record for high school students. She uses an early IBM electric typewriter with a keyboard patented by August Dvorak (1894-1975).
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During the period between 1933, when Dvorak and his disciples began teaching the system in the Pacific Northwest, and 1946, when the official contests ended, converts to the Dvorak keyboard set 26 international records.
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World's fastest typist – English language
As of 2005, that prestigious title belongs to a woman called Barbara Blackburn who managed to not only hit a peak of 216 wpm on a Dvorak keyboard, i.e., a keyboard designed to reduce finger motion, her average typing speed also varied between 150-170 wpm.
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One of the reasons that I've read that the Dvorak keyboard layout did not replace the QWERTY keyboard was simply that QWERTY was well known and free while Dvorak wanted royalties on using his keyboard layout.
An historical oddity is that one of the design goals of the QWERTY keyboard was a deliberate attempt to slow down typists to prevent the type bars from tangling.