Since writing was invented, man has always looked at what he was writing. Whether he was chiselling a stone or inscribing a clay tablet or using a quill pen on a piece of paper, man has always looked at what he was writing.

This continued even with the advent of the mechanical typewriter in the second half of the 19th century. Although the typewriter required the typist to look at the keys to find the right key to tap, very soon a method was invented to tap the keys without looking at the keyboard. This method is known as “touch-typing” or key by touch. More recently, the term touch keyboarding has started to find increased acceptance as it describes more accurately how people use the computer.

Use of the typewriter in this fashion required mastering the touch-typing skill and this skill, together with short-hand writing, became the core competency of “secretaries”, from the time the typewriter was invented until the Personal Computer appeared, a century later.

The Personal Computer
The advent of the Personal Computer in the early 80’s changed this modus operandi. All of a sudden, millions of Personal Computers ended up on the desks of people not trained to use the keyboard properly, that is, to key by touch. They, of course, did the only thing they could do and used the keyboard by looking at the keys.

Touch-Typing is Difficult
The task of memorizing the keyboard layout and learning to touch-type was made difficult by the odd QWERTY layout, inherited from the old typewriter, and by the fact that the keyboard had twice as many keys as the typewriter. Some years later, learning to touch-type became even more difficult as the advent of the graphical user interface and the mouse required the hand to move away from the keyboard very frequently thus forcing the typist to reposition the hand many more times than before. For a more comprehensive discussion on this subject click here.

As a result of all this, the great majority of computer users cannot touch type. The consequence of this are huge both on productivity and, some believe, also on the health of computer users. The section focuses on some of these issues.