Have you ever stopped to think about why your keyboard is laid out the way it is? Why Q-W-E-R-T-Y and not A-B-C-D-E?
Turns out, it has nothing to do with efficiency... and everything to do with typewriter mechanics.
Back in the 19th century, a guy named Christopher Latham Sholes invented one of the earliest typewriters. His first design had the keys arranged alphabetically, which you'd think would be easier to learn. But it had a problem. Typists would get too fast, and the metal type bars would jam when certain commonly used letter pairs were hit in quick succession.
To solve this, Sholes started spreading out those high-use pairs. The result? A weird, shuffled layout that eventually became the QWERTY keyboard we all use today. He sold the rights to the Remington Arms Company, which ran with it, and their Remington Typewriter became the first big commercial success. QWERTY was locked in, and we've been stuck with it ever since.
There's a myth floating around that QWERTY was designed to slow people down on purpose, but there's not much evidence to back that up. It was more about avoiding jams than bottlenecking speed. Still, even with newer alternatives like Dvorak promising faster typing, QWERTY's grip on the world is strong. Once a system becomes the standard, good luck changing it.
This is a great example of what I call technological inertia. The tools we use aren't always the best ones - they're just the ones that caught on first. Like running your starship on isolinear chips long after bioneural gel packs came along... but hey, if it works, right?
So next time you tap out an email or code a subroutine, take a second to appreciate that every Q, W, and Z is where it is because someone 150 years ago was just trying to keep their typewriter from jamming.
LLAP/RR
Adam Schwanz
@Reply 13 months ago
What were the commonly used letter pairs next to each other that caused jams alphabetically? R S T?
It seems like we still have a lot of common combinations together. E R T, A S, G H
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 13 months ago
And to think I still managed to jam up the keys on my old manual typewriter in university. Not because I was too fast mind you, just the opposite. Too slow letting up on the previous key or faster with the next. Even today, all day long I battle reversed key presses, one finger being slightly slower than the next. Digital dyslexia.
So what keys would jam a lot when it was aligned differently, ABC, for example? It would be mostly probably that the keys that they crossed from different sides, right, not the ones that were right next to each other
ChatGPT said:
Exactly. The key jamming issue on early typewriters wasn't just about which letters were next to each other on the keyboard, but rather which combinations of typebars would physically collide when used in quick succession.
Those old typewriters had a mechanism where each key was connected to a metal typebar that would swing up and strike the ribbon and paper. If two commonly used letters had typebars that were located close to each other inside the machine and were hit in rapid sequence (like in a common digraph such as "th" or "he"), those bars could get tangled mid-strike and jam the machine.
In the original alphabetical layout, you had a lot of high-frequency letter pairs like "A-B" or "C-D" positioned next to each other both on the keyboard and mechanically. The issue wasn't necessarily about physical key adjacency on the board, but about the geometry of the typebars behind the scenes. If they came from opposite sides of the basket and crossed paths too often, jams were more likely.
QWERTY was designed to spread those frequent combinations out so that their typebars were farther apart and less likely to interfere. So letters like "T" and "H," which appear together often, were separated to reduce the risk of jams.
So yes, you're absolutely right. The problem had more to do with which typebars were crossing each other's paths in the machine's internal mechanism, not just which letters sat side by side on the surface of the keyboard.
Rolf Widmer
@Reply 13 months ago
Interesting, interesting.
Being engineer, I like such stories.
For additional information: there is also the QWERTZ keyboard layout.
Google search result:
The QWERTZ keyboard layout is the standard keyboard layout used in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and several other Central and Eastern European countries. It's primarily distinguished from the QWERTY layout by the swapping of the "Z" and "Y" keys and the addition of keys for umlauts (Ä, Ö, Ü) and the sharp S (ß).
Have a good day,
Rolf
Sami Shamma
@Reply 13 months ago
Let us not forget the AZERTY layout for keyboards used in French-speaking countries.
Sami Shamma
@Reply 13 months ago
Rolf Widmer
@Reply 13 months ago
You are perfectly right, Sammy. Here is my Swiss German/French keyboard with è/ü, é/ö, à/ä keys.
Rolf Widmer
@Reply 13 months ago
Rolf Widmer
@Reply 13 months ago
PS. It is a QWERTZ
Rolf Widmer
@Reply 13 months ago
PS again. My French colleagues had to get used to QWERTZ (from AZERTY).
Rolf Widmer
@Reply 13 months ago
Gosh, sorry for misspelling your name, Sami! (This has nothing to do with the keyboard layout! LOL)
I never've'd heard about the mechanical obstruction issue with typewriters, but it does make sense. When I was a kid, me and dad lived in great-grandparents' old place a time and they'd had a '60s IBM electric typewriter I missed with. I miss that unit, even if it did weigh a ton (thankfully we had it on a rolling table).
QWERTY seems to work very well once you learn it; games or other scenarios where you're offered a keyboard to type your character name, password for WiFi on a "smart" TV, etc. and they give you an alphabetic keyboard, I so hate that. By opposing sides of clashable letters, it does help it speed up typing by many combinations swapping between hands.
I asked the keyboard layout creator... there is nothing like remapping someone's keyboard just enough to piss them off. Swapping their V and their W. I used to love doing that.
Matt Hall
@Reply 13 months ago
I switched the "N" and "M" key caps for a hunt-and-peck co-worker. He almost destroyed the keyboard trying to log in, so we told him what we had done.
Bryan Enbey
@Reply 13 months ago
@[Matt Hall] Oh man, that's brutal, but I love it! I've always been tempted to get one of those totally unlabeled mechanical keyboards as I just love the clean look all blank (some have LEDs still I believe even). Long as I have F & J bumps, I'm good to go. Meanwhile, just using this early '02 Microsoft keyboard until it goes, but it just keeps cruising, as long as I pop the keys occasionally and deep-clean the thing.
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