Why are the letters on a keyboard put where they are?

Question

why not alphabetical order? who thought of this?

Answer 1

There was a very good reason, but that reason is worthless now.

Remember in the old days when typewriters had little arms attached to the keys that would go up and strike the ink ribbon and imprint the letter on paper? Well, if you have ever typed on a typewriter like this, you know that if you hit 2 keys close together you would get the arms stuck. The keyboard layout was made such that the likelyhood of the arms getting stuck together was minimal.

If anyone tells you that the keyboard layout is for ergonomic reasons that is the furthest from the truth. The layout was the best working layout to prevent the typewriters from constantly jamming. The reason for not changing it? Because that's the way it's always been.

Answer 2

The QWERTY keyboard layout was devised in the 1860s by Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee, who was also the creator of the first modern typewriter. Originally, the characters on the typewriters he invented were arranged alphabetically, set on the end of a metal bar which struck the paper when its key was pressed. However, once an operator had learned to type at speed, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another, forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also frequently blotting the document.[1] Sholes decided that the best way out of the difficulty was to find out which letters were most used in the English language, and then to re-site them on the keyboard as far from each other as possible. This had the effect of reducing the speed, and, by doing so, lessened the chance of clashing type bars. In this way was born the QWERTY keyboard, named after the first six letters on the top line.

Answer 3

"The QWERTY keyboard layout was devised in the 1860s by Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee, who was also the creator of the first modern typewriter. Originally, the characters on the typewriters he invented were arranged alphabetically, set on the end of a metal bar which struck the paper when its key was pressed. However, once an operator had learned to type at speed, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another, forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also frequently blotting the document.[1] Sholes decided that the best way out of the difficulty was to find out which letters were most used in the English language, and then to re-site them on the keyboard as far from each other as possible. This had the effect of reducing the speed, and, by doing so, lessened the chance of clashing type bars. In this way was born the QWERTY keyboard, named after the first six letters on the top line.

The home row (ASDFGHJKL) of the QWERTY layout is thought to be a remnant of the old alphabetical layout that QWERTY replaced. QWERTY also attempted to alternate keys between hands, allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes home a key. This sped up both the original double-handed hunt-and-peck technique and the later touch typing technique; however, single-handed words such as stewardesses and monopoly show flaws in the alternation."

Answer 4

The QWERTY keyboard, so called for the top row of letters on its left-hand side, was devised to make things easy for the typewriter, not the typist.

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 5

I think it’s that the most used letters of the alphabet are placed on the center line and just above and below. The less used letters are put to the side. That’s why q,z,x,w are all off to the far left side, a side that is less dominate and harder to get to.

I think.

Answer 6

It might interest someone that there is another standard in the Western world AZERTY. The only 2 countries using these are France and Belgium and some of their ex-colonies.

Answer 7

the system was designed to keep fast typists from having keys jam when they typed quickly on a TYPEWRITER.

the name of this system is known as a
'qwerty' keyboard.