who developed the typing system we use?why are the letters in the order they are in?

Question

why are they not in alphabetical order?

Answer 1

1867-Christopher Latham Sholes, patented the first useful typewriter.
the keys are configured as such based on the amount of use each letter gets in the English language and the natural ability for the user to hit them at a fast rate.

Answer 2

the first typewriter keyboard was in alphabetical order. but the strikers were made of wire, and became entangled and jammed very easily.

to avoid this problem, the QWERTY board was devised, in an effort to spread the most frequently used keys across the keyboard evenly, in a deliberate effort to slow down typing so that the keys wouldn't jam. the QWERTY board is therefore designed for inefficiency in typing.

later, a man named Dvorak developed what came to be called the DSK (Dvorak Simplified Keyboard) also known as the ASK (American Simplified Keyboard). This keyboard was tested by the US Bureau of Standards and found to be superior to the QWERTY in terms of efficiency, but the QWERTY is too widely used to be displaced except perhaps by a deliberate effort to teach it instead of QWERTY in school typing classes.

the DSK is superior because it places the most frequently used keys on the "home" (center) row, and gathers them around the index and middle fingers which tend to be the strongest for fine motor skills and dexterity.

Answer 3

The QWERTY keyboard was invented to slow down fast typists and spread the most commonly used letters across the keyboard. Before, the Dvorak system was used. In times when typewriters still used the typists would get going so fast that the arms that type the letters would start to get tangled and stuck together. So the QWERTY system was created to slow down the typists and move those letters that were commonly right next to each other, causing the most jamming problems, across the keyboard so they would have less of a chance of hitting each other in fast typing.

Answer 4

I asked this question on Answers months ago, and I got good answers. They were arranged in alphabetical order but then they arranged it in the order in which alphabets were most used. The keyboard we're using now is called the QWERTY (look at the first row of the alphabets on your keyboard) keyboard.

Answer 5

The name "QWERTY" for our typewriter keyboard comes from the first six letters in the top alphabet row (the one just below the numbers). It is also called the "Universal" keyboard for rather obvious reasons. It was the work of inventor C. L. Sholes, who put together the prototypes of the first commercial typewriter in a Milwaukee machine shop back in the 1860's.
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For years, popular writers have accused Sholes of deliberately arranging his keyboard to slow down fast typists who would otherwise jam up his sluggish machine. In fact, his motives were just the opposite.
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When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. At the time, Milwaukee was a backwoods town. The crude machine shop tools available there could hardly produce a finely-honed instrument that worked with precision. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. Looking inside his early machine, we can see how he did it.
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The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called "typebars." The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances.
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He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced.
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The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Sholes' patent granted in 1878 (see drawing), some years after the machine was into production. QWERTY's effect, by reducing those annoying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down.
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Sholes and Densmore went to Remington, the arms manufacturer, to have their machines mass-produced. In 1874, the first Type-Writer appeared on the market. No contemporary account complains about the illogical keyboard. In fact, few contemporary accounts even mention the machine at all. At its debut, it was largely ignored.
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Sales of the typewriter did not take off until after Remington's second model was introduced in 1878, offering the only major modification to the keyboard as we know it today.
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The first machines typed only capital letters. The new Remington No. 2 offered both upper and lower case by adding the familiar shift key. It is called a shift because it actually caused the carriage to shift in position for printing either of two letters on each typebar. Modern electronic machines no longer shift mechanically when the shift key is pressed, but its name remains the same.
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In the decades following the original Remington, many alternative keyboards came and went. Then, in 1932, with funds from the Carnegie Foundation, Professor August Dvorak, of Washington State University, set out to develop the ultimate typewriter keyboard once and for all.
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Dvorak went beyond Blickensderfer in arranging his letters according to frequency. Dvorak's home row uses all five vowels and the five most common consonants: AOEUIDHTNS. With the vowels on one side and consonants on the other, a rough typing rhythm would be established as each hand would tend to alternate.

Answer 6

If you notice, the most frequently used letters are struck with your strongest fingers. Q and Z, for instance, are left pinkie letters. I'm sure that played a part in the keyboard configuration, along with the other answers you've been given.

Answer 7

I think it's based on the letters most often used.

Answer 8

Do they teach typing anymore? I get the impression that most computer users use the Hunt and Peck method!