Voting Station

August Dvorak

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Inventor

The Resume

    (May 5, 1894-October 10, 1975)
    Born in Glencoe, Minnesota
    Psychologist and Professor of Education at the University of Washington
    Co-wrote ‘Typing Behavior’ (1936)
    With his brother-in-law, William Dealey, developed the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK) as an improvement on the standard QWERTY keyboard layout
    Granted patent 2,040,248 for the DSK (1936)

Why he might be annoying:

    The DSK never made much headway against QWERTY.
    He declared, ‘I’m tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race. They simply don’t want to change.’
    Most of the experiments showing the DSK to be faster than QWERTY were biased, having been conducted by Dvorak and boosters of the DSK.
    A study by the General Services Office found that differences in typing speed between the two keyboard layouts were too small to justify the cost of retraining typists (1956).
    Searches for his image tend to turn up his distant relation, composer Antonin Dvorak, instead.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was wounded in the American campaign in Mexico against Pancho Villa (1916).
    He was a submarine captain during World War II.
    With the DSK layout, 70% of keystrokes are performed in the home row, compared to only 32% with QWERTY.
    Some typists with repetitive strain injuries report that switching from QWERTY to DSK alleviated their injuries due to reduced finger motion. (However, the claims have not been verified with scientific studies.)

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 13 Votes: 53.85% Annoying