Why do we use QWERTY keyboards?
TL:DR – Contrary to deceived wisdom, the QWERTY keyboard layout was invented to increase a typist’s words per minute (wpm) rate and reduce errors, rather than to slow them down.
Fellow science writer Jo Brodie was recently discussing how the standard QWERTY keyboard layout has been adapted for different languages. Thankfully, she doesn’t repeat the #DeceivedWisdom regarding the invention of this layout.
It is known that when the typewriter was invented in the 19th Century, the designers tried various layouts for the letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and controls before settling on the very familiar QWERTY layout so many of us use day-to-day. There is a commonly held misconception, a piece of deceived wisdom I would call it in my book of that name, that the reason they settled on QWERTY was to slow typists down.
Now, if you know anything about the Victorian era it was all about speeding up repetitive tasks, this was the age of the steam-driven thing, after all. This was the Industrial Revolution! There is a possible explanation that slowing typists would reduce the number of times the levers would jam if letters that were frequently used together -ph, st, nt, ch etc – were further apart. However, even this is not a good enough explanation as the technology was sufficiently well designed that jams would be very infrequent with any keyboard layout.
Indeed, the reason typewriters, the literary pianos of another age, were laid out in the way they were was to speed up typists! By placing digraphs, the sh, ph, st etc, further apart the first letter could be typed with one hand and the second with the other. This idea came about in the 1870s thanks to Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee-based inventor, and his team, who experimented with different layouts and found their touch typists could work faster and produce fewer errors with this layout than with any of its predecessors.
Of course, as with many inventions, it is often simply commercial success and profit that drive the one that predominates rather than it being a better design. See also: Swan vs Edison lightbulbs, rotary engine vs inline engine, VHS vs Betamax etc. Except, perhaps in the typewriter case, the winner is the most efficient. Fans of the Dvorak keyboard layout and indeed, other more esoteric layouts, might disagree.