[voltooid]

> Why should an architect know Shakespeare and QWERTY?

Well why not? QWERTY could refer to just being able to type. An artist could possibly do well to be able to use a computer? It could also refer to the placement on old style typewriters where the type bars could get jammed if letters used often in the English language were typed in quick succession. (Myth maybe? But interesting to think about anyway for someone that is going to design things for other people to use.)

As to Shakespeare, it has been suggested that people that read fiction/literature of this sort develop empathy and makes you a "better" person.

[sudhirj]

The placement of keys in such s way that they had a low probability of jamming (whether effective or not) has heavy parallels in designing building entries and exits, planning emergency exit capacity etc. Basically if you’re planning an exit also consider human usage statistics of the connected rooms.

[V-2]

> The placement of keys in such s way that they had a low probability of jammin

It's highly debatable, and arguably a myth. The QWERTY design predated any potential jamming problems. Perhaps it was so foreseeing? It's really hard to believe general ergonomy was the top priority, as all the characters of the word TYPEWRITER are placed in the top row, which could have hardly happened by sheer coincidence, but was very convenient for the sake of sale presentations in the early years...

[voltooid]

>The QWERTY design predated any potential jamming problems. Perhaps it was so foreseeing?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-...

Apparently it was partly publicity stunt, partly defined through feedback received from actual users.

[kps]

> This theory [jam avoidance] could be easily debunked for the simple reason that “er” is the fourth most common letter pairing in the English language

Argh, no. E and R are separated by D, 4, and C. It would be nice if someone writing about typewriters actually looked at one.

The bar-adjacent letter pairs, from most to least frequent¹, are MI BY CR NU HN XE HM AZ DC GB ZW VT FV SX.

¹ https://gist.github.com/lydell/c439049abac2c9226e53

[pbhjpbhj]

But if you're an architect skilled in designing vomitoriums, or whatever, then how does adding the mythological QWERTY design add to that.