Why does the QWERTY keyboard layout exist?

Surely almost everyone who has used a computer has pondered this question, just why does the QWERTY keyboard exist? The alphabet goes “ABCDEF” not QWERTY so wouldn’t it be typical to apply that instead of this odd, seemingly random format? You might assume QWERTY was the best option, but what if I told you the real story is far weirder?

First let’s talk about some alternatives we have to the typical QWERTY keyboard– from today and the past.

One is the stenography keyboard, it’s an extremely odd layout that doesn’t even contain all the letters of the alphabet. What makes it a unique alternative isn’t about how the alphabet is organized differently on it– putting aside the fact that the entirety of it isn’t even present on the keyboard– but what it is actually supposed to do. A stenography keyboard is designed to maximise efficiency, rather than typing the spelling of a word it requires you to type the way the word is pronounced, and the lesser letters don’t hinder this, they enable you to type out the pronunciation of every single word with that specific combination of letters, creating a more efficient, unique design than our classic keyboard. 

Another interesting design is the Dvorak keyboard, a layout designed in the 1930s that was hailed to be more efficient than the QWERTY keyboard, the reason for this being that it had it’s letters organised in order of how often they were used, you would find all the vowels and commonly used letters in the middle row to minimise hand movement, placing the less commonly used keys further from the middle to make it require as little possible hand movement as possible. This was another extremely efficient design, but never really stuck since it was overshadowed by the QWERTY keyboard, despite being more efficient than its dominant counterpart. So then if we have better designs, more unique and effective, just why are we still using this relic of a layout? Well the answer is as weird as this layout is.

Well the reason is rather silly, the QWERTY keyboard is observed to be less efficient than all the previous designs mentioned, but that was exactly what it was designed to be: inefficient. The QWERTY keyboard was one of the first keyboard layouts introduced, the first was a typical “ABCDEF” layout that everyone would expect to be obvious, but old mechanical keyboards were clunky, they had mechanical arms that got jammed upon pressing adjacent keys too quickly which made it arduous to type a lot of common words. The QWERTY layout was introduced by Christopher Latham Sholes in the 1860s to be inefficient enough that nobody would be making small movements that pressed adjacent keys, minimising the jamming of the mechanical arms of the typewriters. After this, the format became extremely popularised and became the classic keyboard format at the time. Then that brings forth the question, shouldn’t it have been replaced by a more efficient design once the clunky keyboards were replaced with ones that wouldn’t face that problem? Well the thing is, a lot of infrastructure was built around this layout, typing schools trained students to use this layout, businesses bought machines with this layout, and everyone became skilled with this format, if it was to be changed it would be extremely regressive, millions of people would need to be retrained and rebuild their skills with a new format, this was too difficult so the format just continued to further solidify its place. 

It’s extremely ironic how QWERTY survived not in spite of its flaws– but because of them, typically these kinds of things are improved quickly, but this format was simply too dominant. It actually gives us a valuable insight: QWERTY isn’t just about keyboards, it’s a lesson on how early design decisions– even flawed ones like the QWERTY keyboard– can shape the future for generations to come to the point that it cannot be uprooted without forcing any regression.