Why are keys on a keyboard positioned the way they are?

Question

I assume they are placed by their frequency in words, but is'nt it crazy that we dont even have to think about typing each letter, we just know where it is? Any help?

Answer 1

"In what is generally considered the first practical typewriter--designed by an American inventor named Christopher Sholes and a group of cohorts in the late 1860s--the type, arranged in a sort of circular basket under the carriage, was prone to frequent jamming at typing speeds in excess of hunt-and-peck. (Another problem, by the way, was that type met paper on the underside of the cylinder, so the typist couldn't read the fruits of his or her labors without lifting up the carriage.) To solve the jamming problem, Sholes and company, who had originally arranged their keyboard in alphabetical order, decided to put the most commonly used letters (or what they thought were the most commonly used letters) as far apart as possible in the machine's innards. The next year, 1873, they turned their invention over to the Remington gun company of New York State, and their keyboard has been standard ever since, despite the fact that succeeding improvements in typewriter design quickly rendered it ridiculous."

Answer 2

If I recall correctly, the position of keys on a keyboard were more or less inherited from typewriters. On older typewrites the characters were all on separate hammers which would become suck if consecutive keys were pressed too quickly, so the most frequently typed characters where separated by characters that aren't typed as often.

As for your other question, I think it's just like learning anything. The more you practice it, the easier it becomes, the less you have to think about it.