Why are keyboards arranged "qwertyuiop...." and not alphabetically or something?

Answer 1

Keyboards are arranged so that the most used letters are the easiest to reach. You may notice that seldom used letters such as q and z as well as some of the symbols used in typing are at the edges.

Answer 2

Its all to do with the original Typewriters. They used to work by pressing a key, which move a lever and hit the ink ribbon with an arm with the letter on it. This left a mark on the paper on the other side of the ribbon. Now the arms with the letters on were arranged in a sort of semi-circular shape, almost lying down and used to flip up when the key was pressed. Any arm that went up to hit the paper, had to come back down again, if another arm next to it was moving up as the other came down then quite often they would hit and get tangled. Common letter combinations were then spread out across the keyboard so that when one was pressed (for example Q) the next letter that was usual to follow (U) was spaced a far as possible away so they wouldn't hit. Hence the QWERTY lay out. This is based on the English language, obviously other languages would need other keyboard layouts to reflect the commonly used letters. Although most countries adopted the QWERTY layout, France didn't, and French keyboards follow a different "AZERTY" layout.

It's all based on manual typewriters !

Answer 3

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] A business associate of Sholes, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to speed up typing by preventing common pairs of typebars from striking the platen at the same time and sticking together.

Answer 4

The QWERTY keyboard is a descendant of the type writer.

To prevent jamming of the mechanism the key board lay out was purposely lay ed out so as to separate frequently used letter combinations and to slow the speed of the user down. This was done to prevent jamming.

Answer 5

Long ago people did studies on how much each key would be used, etc. and decided that this is the best layout possible. Just think about having it in alphcabetical order, after thinking you'll notice that it would be a lot harder to type like that.

Answer 6

So they keys didn't get stuck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwertyuiop