The Google Queen (a little Q&A)

My Sister always laughs at me. Just ask me a question, and I'll find the answer. Just the other night my Niece wanted to know how M&M's got it's name. Interesting story you can read about it here!

So a few days ago when Alex asked me "Why are the keys on the keyboard not in alphabetical order?", I thought.......great question!



The early typewriter used a mechanism with characters on the end of a bar. When a key was struck, a linkage would swing the bar into a tape coated with ink. When the character struck the tape, the impression of the character was transferred onto the paper, which was positioned behind the tape.

Sholes' original prototypes had a problem with the bars colliding with each other and jamming. So the story goes that he arranged the keys with the most common letters in hard to reach spots, to slow typists down and try to avoid this problem.

There are very few words in the English language that can be typed with only one hand. Both "pumpkin" and "minimum" can be -- give it a try.

Now to explain the Typewriter to a 6 year old :)!