Keyboards have become an integral part of our daily lives and act as a gateway to the digital world. While we often underestimate their layout and functionality, there are logical reasons behind some design choices. The presence of the Ctrl, Shift and Alt keys on the keyboard is one of the products of this design preference.
Have you ever wondered why your keyboard has two Ctrl, Shift and Alt keys on each side? These keys are called modifier keys because as you know, they change the function of other keys when used together. For example, Ctrl+C copies the selected text. Shift+A capitalizes A and Alt+F4 closes the current window. So why do we need two of each modifier key? Isn’t just one enough? Is there a deeper reason behind this?
To answer these questions we need to go back in time and look at the ancestor of keyboard layouts: QWERTY
The QWERTY layout is attributed to an American inventor named Christopher Latham Sholes, who patented the first practical typewriter in 1868 (so we don’t know who discovered it first, but he did). Sholes was experimenting with different keyboard layouts for his typewriter, which used metal hammers to strike inked strips and make marks on paper.
One of the problems he ran into was hammers getting stuck when two adjacent keys were pressed in quick succession. To solve this problem, he tried to add the most frequently used letter pairs such as TH, ER and AN to the keyboard layout separately. This is how the idea of modifier keys first appeared.
Sholes also borrowed some ideas from existing telegraph keyboards, such as placing vowels at the top and using punctuation as scrolling characters. It also added a space bar at the bottom of the keyboard to separate words. The result was a layout similar to what we use today, except that some keys are in different positions, such as Z and X swapping and M being in second place.
Finally, the Shift key was added to these typewriters so that users can type letters in uppercase or lowercase whenever they want. Sholes sold his typewriter patent to the Remington company, which manufactures firearms and sewing machines. Remington made some minor changes to Sholes’ layout and began mass production of typewriters in 1874. IBM added the Ctrl and Alt keys on modern keyboards that we know now to the literature.
So why put two of these modifier keys in each?
As we said, the original typewriters did not have these modifier keys because they were not needed for typing text (except for the Shift key). However, as computers became more advanced and capable of performing a variety of functions and commands, these keys began to be used to provide shortcuts and options to users.
Having two sets of keys is on our keyboards as it allows users to use both hands to perform shortcuts and commands, depending on which one is closer or comfortable. For example, the C and V letters we use in the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V commands we use to copy and paste the selected text are close to where we position our left hand on the keyboard. That’s why we use the left Ctrl key to copy and paste text with one hand.
However, if you need to bold a selected text in Word, the command is Ctrl+K. For this, instead of using both hands, you can do it with one hand by using the right Ctrl key.
Or to give another example, did you know that you can only do the Ctrl+Alt+Del command with your right hand, which is the location we all use to get to the Task Manager?
In other words, as you can understand, there are two of these change keys, although most of the daily users do not use these keys, these keys are there to make our work easier, and when you make it a habit, you will start using the computer much faster.
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