PC Keyboard: Some Interesting Facts and Useful Statistics

Technology is now part of our daily lives. Consider that 94% of Italian households have an internet connection. More and more practices and services can be conveniently handled from home thanks to technology.

Bills, payments, contracts, insurance. The digital world is now taking hold in every sector of life. A phenomenon that is increasingly developing, significantly lowering the age range of those who approach this world.

A statistic from Istat, carried out at the request of the association Save the Children, found that 54% of Italian children aged between 6 and 10 years old regularly use an internet connection. This percentage rises to 93% if the age range is extended up to 17 years old.

This brief introduction is to help you understand how technology is now perfectly embedded in our daily lives. But are we sure we know everything about it?

After the Smartphone, one of the most used objects is the keyboard of the personal computer. The keyboard is an input peripheral of the computer that the user can use to enter data, but also to perform various actions more quickly.

A real tool that can be built into the PC (in the case of a laptop model, for example) or be external to the central unit. The keyboard market is constantly moving. Progress and efficiency are the norms and have led to increasingly innovative keyboards.

Just to give you an example, we can mention washable keyboards, perfect for medical use in various hospital centers, or gaming keyboards, a sector constantly developing. Precisely on the latter, that is, gaming keyboards, we point out an interesting article from the site MiglioriPc where you can find useful tips for choosing the perfect keyboard for your virtual games.

Given the widespread presence of the keyboard in Italian homes and beyond, we thought it might be interesting to discover some curious facts that concern it closely.

PC Keyboard: interesting curiosities

Perhaps not everyone knows that the computer keyboard has a very long history that even dates back to 1864.

In fact, the first true keyboard was not connected to a personal computer, but more precisely to a typewriter.

Designed and created by Christopher Sholes it completely revolutionized the way of writing.

The keyboard’s design was the result of a careful analysis by Sholes who created an instrument still extremely important today.

In 1984 the keyboard underwent a modern redesign, but its origin owes everything to Christopher Sholes.

PC Keyboard: the QWERTY layout

The term QWERTY is now known to everyone. A term you also find on your smartphone when you have to choose the type of keyboard for writing.

QWERTY obviously derives from the first 6 letters present on the keyboard, arranged in this order for a purely technical reason. To understand why, we have to go back to 1864.

We have already explained that initially, the keyboard was strictly connected to the typewriter.

The latter had typebars, connected to each single letter, which during writing tended to jam together.

Christopher Sholes when designing it wisely decided to divide the sequence of letters into several vertical lines to eliminate the problem at the root. Moreover, he decided to not follow the alphabetical order but to divide the syllables most used in the English language so as to have an equal division of letters between the two hands.

This intelligent arrangement of the letters then allowed to acquire a precise typing technique with a great improvement in writing speed.

PC keyboard: other layouts

Over time, the AZERTY layout was also created, which has the letters A-Q e W-Z inverted. It also features numbers and many non-alphanumeric keys in completely different positions.

This type of keyboard is mainly used in French-speaking countries such as Belgium and France.

There are also other types of layouts regarding the arrangement of letters.

They are much less common but some countries, due to their native language, find it easier to write with layouts like DVORAK o COLEMAK, in which the differences are definitely greater compared to the QWERTY and AZERTY layouts.

A separate chapter is for the keyboards of Asian or Arab countries, where each key can represent up to 3 or 4 letters.

PC keyboard: curious statistics

But do you know what the most clicked key in the world is? Obviously the largest key, which is SPACE.

It’s estimated that it’s used, worldwide, about 6 million times… every second.

And what about the letter keys then? Here, the letter E.

PC Keyboard: Hygiene Level

Regarding keyboards, it must also be said that there are not-so-positive facts to discover.

In fact, it seems the keyboard is a real hotbed of germs and bacteria.

Particularly, PC keyboards used in public places have a higher concentration of bacteria than average.

British studies have even found mouse droppings on keyboards in public offices.

It’s obvious, therefore, that it’s good practice to pay more attention to hand and keyboard hygiene in general.

Precisely for this reason, new types of keyboards have also emerged, which we mentioned at the beginning of this article.

We are talking about washable keyboards which thus allow for complete cleaning and sterilization, increasing the level of hygiene.

It’s always interesting to learn and discover more details about objects and tools we use practically every single day.

Now you can look at your keyboard with more curious and attentive eyes.