Blog Post #7: History of The QWERTY Keyboard

During our recent EOTO presentations, the technology that stood out to me the most and that I had learned about was the first keyboard, and the one thing that really caught my attention was the history of the QWERTY layout. Like most people, I’ve used a keyboard almost every day, but I never really thought about why the keys are arranged the way they are. It turns out, the story is more interesting than I expected! The QWERTY layout was developed in the 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter. At the time, typewriters used mechanical arms to press ink onto paper, but these arms

would often jam when people typed too quickly or used certain combinations of letters. To solve this, Sholes intentionally spaced out the most frequently used letters, which slowed down typing just enough to prevent jams. 

What I found most surprising is that even though modern keyboards no longer have those mechanical parts, the QWERTY layout is still the standard. There have been attempts to introduce more efficient layouts, like the Dvorak keyboard, which is designed for faster typing, but none have gained as much popularity. It seems that once people became accustomed to QWERTY, changing the system wasn’t worth the hassle. 

QWERTY's History

This whole story made me realize that technology can evolve in unexpected ways—sometimes, solutions to old problems become so ingrained that they remain part of our daily lives, even when the original issues no longer exist. Without this presentation, I wouldn’t have known why the keyboard I use all the time is arranged the way it is.