Dvorak History

Here is a quick timeline of typewriter and Dvorak facts, for those of you who are more text-based. We still think it's more fun to read the zine!

To the right is the only known photograph we have been able to find of August Dvorak, with a typing class at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was taken on November 14th, 1932, the same year he released his new keyboard layout.

Photo used with permission from the Univeristy of Washington Libraries Digital Collection

1819

Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the first commercially viable typewriter, is born near Mooresburg, PA.

1873

Sholes invents the first practical typewriter, with the QWERTY keyboard layout

1878

Remington No. 2 typewriting machince introduced (fixed typebar design problems)

1888

Touch typing with all 10 fingers introduced by Frank E. McGurrin

1889

Sholes applies for a patent for an improved keyboard layout design (it was approved SEVEN YEARS LATER)

1890

Sholes dies at the age of 71.

1894

August Dvorak born

1932

After years of research, Dr. August Dvorak invents the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard Layout at the University of Washington

1936

Dr. Dvorak publishes his findings on the ergonomics and mathematics of typing in Typewriting Behavior: Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning Typewriting. The book is currently out of print, but can still be found in many university libraries

1975

August Dvorak dies in 1975, a bitter man: "I'm tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race," he complained. "They simply don't want to change!"

1982

ANSI approves the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard Layout as an official keyboard layout.

1997

Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Guns, Germs and Steel", publishes The Curse of QWERTY in Discover magazine, explaining the history of QWERTY and Dvorak to a broad non-scientific audience.

2005

Alec, Frunch and GCB self-publish The Dvorak Zine!

2008

Alec, Frunch and GCB kick off the very first annual Dvorak Day on May 21st - the same day the Dvorak patent was filed in 1932.

2011

Alec, Frunch and GCB change the license of The Dvorak Zine to a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, allowing others to improve and translate it, so its message can continue to spread.