Introduction

Unless you've explicitly chosen NOT to, you're probably typing on a QWERTY keyboard. Starting from the Q key, read each right-adjacent letter: Q W E R T Y, a QWERTY keyboard.

Why does the QWERTY layout arrange letters as it does?

History

Christopher Latham Sholes first filed for a typewriting patent in 1867. The first model built by Sholes had alphabetically arranged keys:

- 3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M

Over the next few years, Sholes iterated on the arrangement of keys. For example, an 1873 prototype has an almost-QWERTY layout, from what I can tell in the picture, roughly:

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - ,
Q W E . T Y I U O P
Z S D F G H J K L M
A X & C V B N ? ; R

Also in 1873, Sholes and his investors agreed to sell the production rights to gun-maker Remington, which, following the Civil War, had branched out into appliances. The resulting Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer sold in major cities of the US in 1874, sporting the modern QWERTY layout, minus 0 and 1 keys and some punctuation changes. The US Patent office issued another patent to Sholes in 1878, containing the first officially documented example of the QWERTY layout (omitting 2 antiquated symbols):

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - , —
 Q W E R T Y U I O P :
  A S D F G H J K L M
 & Z C X V B N ? ? ; .

Conflicting accounts

I've read conflicting accounts on how the QWE.TY and QWERTY layouts relate. One account suggests Sholes insisted on the QWE.TY to QWERTY adjustments. Another account suggests Remington made those adjustments. Yet another account claims the QWERTY layout “had already been settled on four months earlier [than the 1973 QWE.TY prototype].”

More importantly, I've read conflicting accounts on how Sholes, Remington, and co. decided on the QWERTY layout. The most popular theory I've seen states that Sholes arranged letters appearing in common sequences far apart to avoid jamming. However, that seems to contradict T and H (“th”) and R and E (“re” and “er”) occuring so close together. Another popular theory suggests the layout resulted from feedback from telegraph operators transcribing Morse code, early users of the typewriter. However, early users also included attorneys, stenographers, and writers (including Mark Twain!), and I can't imagine telegraph operators constituting a large, attractive customer base.

Conclusion

Clearly, though, the QWERTY layout does NOT prioritize the comfort of the human hand. It places an inordinate amount of work on the weaker fingers, and generally favors the left hand, most people's non-dominant hand. The conception of QWERTY, in fact, pre-dates touch-typing. As historian Jan Noyes points out, “the original QWERTY keyboard was intended for ‘hunt and peck’ operation and not touch-typing,” making it a poor legacy match for touch-typists. Next time, let's explore the Dvorak layout, designed to overcome this issue.