1 understanding the economics of QWERTY英文资料.pdfVIP

Paul A. David, ‘Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: the Necessity of History’, in W. N. Parker (ed.), Economic History and the Modern Economist (1986). Reviewed by Robert Schiff 9 March 2005, Methods and Themes in Economic and Social History Paul A. David knows a thing or two about the impact of historical legacy. As a long-time member of Oxford University, David only had to look at the exam regulations (all 1140 pages of it) to get some sense that our world is driven not just by rationality and efficiency, but by the historical legacy it inherits. Yet, David did not choose Oxford for his anecdotal case study path dependency. Intrigued by the placement of the ‘W’ next to ‘E’ on his keyboard, David chose this anachronistic layout as his object of inquiry. In his effort to understand ‘the economics of QWERTY’, David has found a tale that is path-dependence writ real. ‘A pat h-dep endent sequence of economic changes is one in which important influences upon the eventual outcome can be exerted by temporally remote events, including happenings dominated by chance elements rather than systematic forces’.1 David’s tale of QWERTY confirms that once something takes shape, a wide range of pressures can make change difficult. QWERTY refers to the top row of letters on most every contemporary keyboard. David traces this configuration back to Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin printer who, in the 1860s, designed a ‘primitive writing machine ’.2 On this machine, the printing point was located under the paper- carriage, leaving the typed words invisible to the operator during the writing process. Sometimes the type-bars would get stuck with each other, meaning that while the operator would think he was typing different letters, the machine would repeatedly use the stuck bar over and over. This was a problem. To correct it, Sholes spent six years trying to find a keyboard layout that woul