Who designed the QWERTY keyboard? It doesn’t take long for beginning keyboarders to ask because the letters seem to be placed completely at random. Even though the QWERTY keyboard, named for the top left letters on the board, is the result of an out-of-date technology, this modern keyboard is used all over the world for English-language computer users.

Problem
Newspaperman Christopher Sholes invented a writing machine in 1868 that printed individual letters onto paper. This first typewriter was made with type bars that contained one letter apiece. When a letter key was depressed, a type bar sprang from a bed inside the typewriter and imprinted an inked letter upon the paper. However, when two keys were pressed at the same time or one closely after another, the bars could jam.

Solution
It made sense to place letters that were often paired together in words (like “sh” or “st”) far apart to avoid jamming the type bars. Sholes experimented with several keyboard types over six years, eventually perfecting a keyboard setup that allowed typists to work as fast as possible with the fewest jams. He came up with the modern QWERTY layout and sold the rights to Remington in 1873.

Modern Parallels To The Original QWERTY
The letter positions on the QWERTY computer keyboards have mostly remained the same. A few letters, such as the letter M, have migrated from one place to another, and a few letters (C and M) have been transposed. Another similar feature is the offset nature of the keys still seen on modern keyboards. In the original mechanical typewriters, this was to accommodate the mechanics needed for the levers to make the type bars move.

The reason the QWERTY computer keyboard is still in use today, even though all the reasons for its arrangement no longer exist, is that there have been no significant or conclusive tests to show that other keyboard layouts offer any advantage.