Keyboard Letter Frequency Pic

[Dave Hughes]

Posted on Twitter, this qwerty keyboard has the size of the keys determined by their frequency of use. I'm not sure if the author used the Linotype as a reference, but looking at the picture, they seem to have come to more or less the same result.

Click picture for a better view:

[Mechanic]

The story of how the layout of the final Linotype keyboard came about was not the result of a great deal of research. Mergenthaler's first production Blower Linotype was installed at the New York Tribune in 1886. The keyboard had 107 keys, including the folding wedge (spaceband) key, arranged in four rows. I have not been able to ascertain the layout of the keyboard, but I do know from my research that a number of operators complained that some of the most used keys were difficult to reach. It is reported that Mergenthaler tore a story from the page of a newspaper and asked his assistant, Charles Letsch, to count the frequency that  each character appeared and the keyboard layout we know today was the result.

I'm sure getting the most frequently used matrices back to the magazine as quickly as possible, also played a part in the design