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Why are there so many homeless people around Seoul Station?

 You may notice quite a few homeless people around Seoul Station. A lot of visitors ask me, “Why are there so many homeless people here?” One of the biggest reasons goes back to 1997, during the Asian Financial Crisis. In Korea, we usually call it the IMF Crisis . A lot of companies went bankrupt, unemployment rose very quickly, and many people suddenly lost their jobs and income. Some people eventually lost their homes as well. And many of them came to Seoul Station . Why here? Because this was one of the main places to find day labor and temporary jobs , and it was also the main railway station if they wanted to go back to their hometowns. But some had no money left and nowhere else to go, so they stayed around the station. That is one reason Seoul Station became one of the main gathering places for homeless people after the 1997 crisis. Then another thing happened. Once many homeless people were here, churches, charities, NGOs, and the government started providing help here. Th...

How was the English keyboard layout created?


Until the shift key came out, another key was needed to print capital letters, so the keyboard was arranged in eight to ten rows. Early typewriter keyboards were arranged strictly in alphabetical order.


Who invented the QWERTY keyboard? 


In 1873, Christopher Latham Sholes of the United States typed himself when the fast-handed typists struck a strike and realized that the typewriter arrangement was in alphabetical order, which was quite inconvenient.

After consulting with his younger brother who is teacher, he found that it was efficient to arrange frequently used texts in opposite directions. Christopher Latham Sholes's brother also is one of the inventors who made the QWERTY keyboard we use today.


The layout of this keyboard was previously used by typists to type using only two fingers, but the invention of this keyboard layout prevents a situation where the hands crash on the keyboard when people type


To reduce the rejection of those who were accustomed to the existing keyboard layout, the Scholes brothers sold this new keyboard layout, promoting it as a scientific arrangement. They also emphasized that there is little need to move your finger when using the QWERTY keyboard layout.

But in fact, the opposite is true. Scholes' keyboard layout required moving a lot of fingers near the keyboard to get basic English words. But still many people believe Scholes' false advertisement.  The invention of this keyboard caused a boom in keyboard productivity.

With the advent of state-of-the-art vibrating typewriters, word processors, and computers, there was no need for a bar on each letter of a typewriter, and there was no need for an ordinary keyboard layout. Many people have hung on developing more efficient keyboards, among which Dvorak keyboards have gained great popularity, but there is still no logic or product that will destroy the popularity of ordinary keyboard layouts.

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