Have you ever wondered about the origins of the keyboard layout? Ever wondered who the hell QWERTY is? Well unfortunately I don’t have all the answers to your questions, but I did read up about the origins of the keyboard layout simply because I was curious.
First of all, the QWERTY layout was patented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes (1819-1890). Earlier versions of Sholes’ keyboard layout caused the keys to jam, so it was suggested by James Densmore that letters that are commonly used together should be split up in order to slow down typing. A certain part of the keyboard is still in alphabetical order. Notice the “FGH” and the “JKL”.
So how does it feel to know that we’re typing on a keyboard that was intentionally designed to slow down our typing?