Why Do We Use A QWERTY Keyboard

Why Do We Use A QWERTY Keyboard

It has been quite long years we are using our classic QWERTY keyboard. Be it from computers to the classic old phones, keyboard has always been a part of our life. Beginning from type writers the trend eventually went through electronic keyboards.

The Writing Machine

The keyboard was earlier considered a machine, named the “WRITING MACHINE“. The machine was invented by Christopher Lather Sholes in early 1870’s and he brought it out in the year 1867. The first writing machine had only two rows and the letters were arranged in alphabetical order with numbers from 2 to 9. O and I were used to type the number 1 and 0.

The Earlier Keyboard In Alphabetical Order

The early writing machine was completely mechanical machine with levers and metal indenters, which stroked on the ink button to make an impression on the paper.

Despite being much faster to learn and easier to use, this alphabetic layout would often jam when users typed too quickly. As there were so many levers in the machine the problem of jamming was genuine. The levers got jammed when letters placed near by were typed successively. This problem had many other consequences, as even single typing would require unjamming the keys, ripping out the paper, washing the ink out of your fingers, inserting a new sheet and starting all over again.

To avoid this problem, the letter pairs used frequently were placed apart. Placing them apart gave sufficient time for the levers to come back to their original position. The new layout was actually designed to slow down typists and avoid the problem of jamming. After this, Sholes tried harder for the next 5 years to make his invention perfect.

The QWERTY Keyboard Invention

In 1873, the manufacturing rights were sold to E. Remmington and sons. The company again arranged the letters and QWERTY keyboard still remains in use on electronic keyboards.

For most people, learning QWERTY pattern is surely difficult, but once you have mastered it, relearning any other layout would be more difficult.