February 26, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR SHEILA ENGLAND IN PA
Here is a computer link regarding the QWERTYUIOP arrangement and the Dvorak
arrangement.
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal/dvorak_advice.html
You are right, QWERTY is inefficient and it was designed that way for a
reason.
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A: FROM MENTOR LORI KANE IN MA
This is such an interesting question! I found the answer at
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/

"In 1874 Remington & Sons manufactured the first commercial typewriter,
called the Remington Number 1. This typewriter was designed by Christopher
Sholes and used the "QWERTY" keyboard we are all familiar with.

This early typewriter used a mechanism with characters on the end of a
bar. When a key was struck, a linkage would swing the bar into a tape
coated with ink. When the character struck the tape, the impression of the
character was transferred onto the paper, which was positioned behind the
tape.

Sholes' original prototypes had a problem with the bars colliding with
each other and jamming. So he arranged the keys with the most common
letters in hard to reach spots, to slow typists down and try to avoid this
problem."

So, it turns out it was intentionally designed to be hard to use! (I know
this probably doesn't make you feel better). There is another keyboard
layout called Dvorak that places all of the most commonly used letters in
the home row. However, I have never seen this one used.

I realize this isn't a very comforting answer, but typing definitely gets
easier with practice. Soon it will become second nature and you won't even
think about it.
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A: FROM MENTOR CHRISTINE KUTA IN MA
The arrangement of the letters on computer keyboards dates back to early
typewriters where each key was activated mechanically by the typist. It
turned out that people could activate mechanical keys much faster than the
mechanical typewriters could handle it. The keys would jam together making it hard to
type. An inventor, whose name I don't remember, decided to design a key
arrangement that would slow typists down and came up with the arrangement of
letters and numbers that we have today. In this design, for example, the most
commonly used letters in the English language (e, t, s and r) are arranged on the
left side of the keyboard. Since most people are right-handed, they type
more slowly with their left hands and this keyboard arrangement solved the slow
typewriter problem. Unfortunately, the key arrangement became a standard and
we are stuck with it today. There have been movements to adopt more efficient
key arrangements but none have succeeded.
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A: FROM MENTOR PATRICIA MCROY IN GA
I'm sure that there's more info on the web about typewriter key arrangement,
but it's my understanding that the keys were originally laid out to make
sure that keys were not typed in rapid succession. This certainly seems
counter-intuitive and inefficient. However, the old manual typewriters used
a hammer mechanism for each key, and if 2 hammers close together were struck
in very rapid succession, they could overlap and lock up the typewriter.
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A: FROM MENTOR ESHE PICKETT IN IL
Well, do you remember the old saying "If it ain't broke don't fix it?" that is the case with the keyboard. Before there were computers, there were typewriters, and those are what the keyboard was modeled from. Earlier typewriters ran into problems because keys that were commonly used together caused the typewriter keys to jam frequently. As a result, the keys were divided to slow down typing and cause fewer jams (which is why letters that are commonly used together are not grouped together).

So the keyboard was mapped from the typewriter, since it was an already working model, people were familiar with the format. To really get the dirt, visit: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltypewriter.htm
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A: FROM MENTOR MINI VARUGHESE IN MD
They were designed that way to slow typists down. The original key board had arms that had to swing up and hit the paper, if you typed too fast, they jammed up.
http://www.mavisbeacon.com/history_beginnings.html third page of this website explains the keyboard.
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A: FROM MENTOR MARTY WOELFEL IN KY
Julie, it's my understanding the QWERTY keyboard (named for those
letters which are on the top left row of letters) was arranged the way
it was because of the mechanics of the original (or nearly original)
typewriters. These typewriters had long (and bent in strange ways)
pieces of metal with a specific letter on the end of each key. The
whole mechanical arrangement had to be done in such a way that the key
for each letter on the keyboard could be hit and the long metal pieces
could strike the paper without getting all tangled up with each other.
So a lot of effort went into designing a letter arrangement to find the
best arrangement to avoid key tangling. Some of that involved deciding
which letters and letter combinations were most likely to be used and
putting them on opposite ends of the keyboard. And, I believe that one
factor was actually to make sure people could not physically type so
fast they overwhelmed the system. Even then sometimes fast typists
still "tangled" the keys--or poor typists had bad "rhythms" and tangled
the keys. Once the keys were all caught in one another, the operator
had to reach inside the typewrite to untangle the keys. In the process
usually the operator got her hands all inky. (Can you tell I learned to
type on one of these old monsters? As a typist with rotten rhythm, I
did a wonderful job of tangling keys!)

Later typewriter technology changed to daisy wheels and IBM selectric
type "balls" with letters (no more keys to tangle), but the typists all
knew the QWERTY keyboard and didn't want to learn a new system. So the
arrangement of keys did not change. . .no one would buy a different
system. Now there's computers, and there's still the same problem--if
the system used by most people is QWERTY, that's what a person finds on
the keyboards and eventually learns to use. Some people have
"invented" much more sensible and logical systems which a brand new
learner can learn much more easily than QWERTY, but all the QWERTY users
still want QWERTY keyboards. So the "system" kinda perpetuates itself
because it's the system out there, even though it was designed to solve
a problem that no longer exists and there's "better" models to follow.