Early in 1911, The Boston Globe published “A Twisted Alphabet” (see post here), in which the author championed changing the alphabet to the QWERTY arrangement of characters. Later, came the following:
From The Boston Globe, June 7, 1911 –
© 2020, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.
I wonder whether the author was a Blick dealer!
I hadn’t thought of that. Certainly, DHIATENSOR had its proponents. I’ve often thought that just about any order would have sufficed. I recall first seeing a typewriter keyboard as a kid and wondering why they didn’t use the ABCs. That said, once I learned QWERTY, it didn’t seem all that special. I play guitar, violin and the ukulele, so I’m constantly adjusting between chord arrangements and fingerings without any trouble. I suppose it would be interesting to see if one could type interchangeably from QWERTY to DHIATENSOR in a similar fashion. Only, it just isn’t necessary. I think that is why DHIATENSOR never gained a foothold. In the end, it really didn’t matter.
I’ve never seen a DHIATENSOR typewriter. I think it’d be fun to try. I have converted my computer keyboard to Dvorak, and I found it quite easy once learned. However over time the software has been unuseable on modern operating systems so I use QWERTY. One day I may write a C or Python program to do one or both. Used keyboards are plentiful and cheap. Key tops are easy to pop off and relocate. A good project for winter of 2020 -2021.