Shift Happens tells the story of keyboards like no book ever before,
covering 150 years from the early typewriters to the pixellated keyboards in our pockets.
It’s a book about typists competing during the Shift
Wars of the 1880s; Nobel-prize winner Arthur Schawlow using a laser to build the best typo eraser;
August Dvorak – and many others – trying to dethrone QWERTY;
Margaret Longley and Lenore Fenton perfecting touch typing;
Soviet agents listening to American keystrokes; women pouring
into offices, eager to do more than typing and re-typing; people aspiring to make
the best mechanical keyboard today by blending the past and the future.
This is the only book that connects the world of typewriters to the universe of computers.
Whether you’re into vintage typewriters, classic clicky IBM keyboards, or modern
mechanical wonders, it will have something for you. None of the above?
Get ready to become a keyboard nerd anyway, and look at an everyday
boring QWERTY slab with newfound respect.
You’ve never seen a book on technology like this.
Shift Happens is full of stories – some never before told –
interleaved with 1,000+ beautiful full-color photos across two
volumes.
This edition features an extra volume of additional illustrations and
“making of” material, and everything comes wrapped in a slipcase.
It’s a great gift for keyboard or typewriter aficionados, but also
suits everyone who cares about design, the stories of everyday objects, or tech history.
Marcin Wichary
This is what the inside looks like
I’m really proud of these stats
1,300
photographs
1,200
pages*
42
chapters
2
volumes*
520
full-color photos taken exclusively for this book
37
Easter Eggs hiding in the book (at least; I might have lost count)
4
photos of keyboards using Comic Sans
2
custom-made fonts
* Plus a 160-page volume of extras in this edition
Printing & packaging details
The list of chapters
Tap or hover over any chapter title to see what it’s about!
Volume one
“No tocar, si us plau”
The early years of mingled triumph and disaster
The Shift Wars
The machine you will eventually buy
All the fingers or none
Once mechanical, now digital
The primitive tortureboard
“The monster feels as if it had a certain will of its own.”
I started working on this book in 2016, inspired by the reception
of my Medium posts about typewriters. Since then,
I spent many hours interviewing, writing, photographing,
typesetting, and… many other, sometimes rather unexpected things!
Chapter 30 talks about many interesting layouts. Can
you arrange a keyboard from memory, quickly and without mistakes?
Cover your keyboard with a cloth so you can’t cheat, and then give it a shot!
Keys placed
Time
Accuracy
Drag me onto the keyboard!
Congratulations on finishing!
Master the Permutation Typograph
Chapter 36 covers chording keyboards. The first one ever?
1857’s Permutation Typograph, a pocket-sized typewriter with a unique mode of operation –
six “finger-pieces” (today: “keys”) meant to be pressed simultaneously,
and a simplified alphabet to match them.
Pocketability was one of the selling points. You could, in the words of one
newspaper, “write without using one’s eye – in the dark, in
the [train] cars, standing in a dense of and jostling crowd, and without
attracting notice.”
The same article claimed “a single day is ample time for
one of ordinary tact to master the art […] Some of the letters vary in
their form from those in common use; but the variations are so slight that,
with a very little practice, the writing is read with the greatest ease.”
Let’s see if you agree in this Permutation Typograph simulator!
Type using your keyboard as you normally do, and get to know the Permutation
Typographer’s unique alphabet.
Type by pressing a segment key one at a time –
U, I, O
and J, K, L
– then press Enter to move on to the next letter!
Type by pressing all the matching segment keys together, like you
would on the actual device.
Note: This requires a keyboard that supports multiple key presses
(“N-key rollover”). You can test this by pressing UIOJKL at the same time,
and seeing whether ▔▁▏▕v^ appears.
Type by pressing all the matching segment keys together, like you
would on the actual device, without any hints or preview!
Note: This requires a keyboard that supports multiple key presses
(“N-key rollover”). You can test this by pressing UIOJKL at the same time,
and seeing whether ▔▁▏▕v^ appears.
Visit this page on a bigger screen for more
Make sure to visit this page on a desktop or a laptop (with a keyboard attached, natch)
to see a few more things, including a few games!
Make your own Dvorak hands
Fifty years ago, in a 1972 issue of Computers And Automation, Robert Parkinson created
a striking visual
representing the imbalance on typing of QWERTY as compared to the Dvorak layout.
In chapter 6, I talk about the myths and truths behind QWERTY and Dvorak.
But before you get a chance to read it, you can make your own hand visuals by typing,
and simulate how different layouts influence your finger load.
Type or paste here…
Try creative writing, typing code, words like “sweaterdresses” or
“aftercataracts,” or .
I’m typing using BLAH.
Pretend I’m typing using .
Press the right key!
See if you can guess all ten keys (or key combinations)!
Just press the keys you think are the right answers to the
following questions:
If you want to give up – or if you don’t have a keyboard attached –
just click or tap on any of them 10 times to reveal the answer!
People helping with the project
I brought Glenn Fleishman onboard as the editor and the manager of the print production,
crowdfunding, and fulfillment. Glenn managed several successfully fulfilled Kickstarter
projects, including the Tiny Type Museum & Time Capsule and four books. He has also
consulted as a friend, colleague, and paid adviser at early and late stages on dozens
of crowdfunding projects that have collectively raised many millions of dollars. Glenn also
has extensive experience in offset printing and technology writing.
Read Glenn’s detailed bio
or visit his website.
Scout Festa, a veteran editor and proofreader, has served as a proofreader on the book,
and helped develop its style guide.
I also wanted to say thank you to Jacob Alexander, Erica Fischer, Martin Howard, Jake Knapp,
Robin Rendle, Mike Sall, Robin Sloan, Dag Spicer, Jesse Vincent, Peter Weil, and many more
for their time and support.
Catch up on the newsletter
I started a newsletter
documenting the book-writing process, and sharing more keyboard stories.
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