Ever Wondered Why The Letters On A Computer Keyboard Are NOT In Alphabetical Order?

We are in a digital world now and computers have become our basic need in our lives. And the primary thing we need to operate this machine is a keyboard. Every time I see my keyboard, a question comes into my mind – why are the keys not arranged in the alphabetical order? Why are they MIXED up like this? Is there any reason behind this?

Have you also ever thought of this? If so, here we are going to tell you some facts about the arrangement of letters on Keyboard. Check out why!

The modern keyboard called by the name QWERTY (the name comes from the first 6 letters of the keyboard), has the letters arranged in the same order as that of a TYPEWRITER. Let’s see who made this layout and why didn’t they arrange them in the alphabetical order.

The most popular explanation claims that the key positioning was designed to slow down typists because the early typewriter’s mechanical design resulted in jammed keys and components.

The first keyboard patented by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1868 had the keys alphabetically arranged. The keys were arranged in the serial order because it was the birth of keyboard and the inventor thought arranging the alphabets in a row would be good for the user to type easily and quickly.

Must Read: 25 Incredible Things iPhone Could Do.

But the arrangement of the letters was later changed because of some problems.

Here’s what its layout looked like – The keyboard with arrangements of keys for the second time:

Well, it had its own problems like jamming of keys because of side to side arrangements of letters.

Despite being much faster to learn and easier to use, this semi-alphabetic layout would often jam (note the position of the T, H & S keys) when users typed too quickly. As anyone who’s used a typewriter will tell you, even one single jam or a simple typo, would require unjamming the keys, ripping out the old paper, washing the ink off your fingers, inserting a new sheet, and starting all over again.

Sholes and his partners later sold their design for a typewriter and its keyboard to Remington & Sons, who manufactured the first commercial typewriter. The company again re-arranged the LETTERS and adopted the QWERTY layout as the standard.

The keys of the QWERTY layout are arranged in such a way to make fast typing difficult as old typewriters would easily jam.

There is an interesting fact here. All the letters of the word “TYPEWRITER” could be typed quickly since all the letters were on one row of your keyboard.

This is how the layout of the Keys in the KEYBOARD evolved.