Dvorak keyboard
Teclado Dvorak
- Date
- 1932 (diseño) / 1936 (patente) · confidence high
- Place
- Seattle, Washington, United States
- Credited to
- August Dvorak and William Dealey
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Education professor August Dvorak, with his brother-in-law William Dealey, studied English letter frequency and hand physiology to design a keyboard layout alternative to QWERTY that would reduce finger movement and typing fatigue. Despite studies showing speed gains, it never displaced QWERTY because of the cost of retraining typists.
Later studies have questioned the real magnitude of the speed advantages Dvorak claimed to have measured.
What it led to
- Ergonomics studies in human-computer interaction
- Later alternative keyboard layouts (Colemak, etc.)
Built on
- QWERTY keyboard