Why qwerty not abcde

The story of the keyboard layout that we use every day is older than you might think; some would argue that the origin of the keyboard layout is older than the keyboard itself, or some variants of the keyboard such as the typewriter. Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the first practical typewriter. Sholes typewriter, Buffalo History Museum. The famous keyboard layout that you encounter on numerous occasion every day, is known as the QWERTY layout, made by simply joining the first five key letter on the top left corner of the keyboard.

The developers were after a system that was not just productive but would also exert minimal strain on the hands of the typist. After the initial introduction of the QWERTY, the system simply stuck around and the subsequent minds thought to keep the layout as it had gotten embedded too deep in our system due to inertia.

In the later years, the machine got reinvented by several innovators to bring in ease and productivity. However, the credit of introducing the typewriter on a large commercial scale historically goes to Sholes, who invested almost all of his life and efforts in making his layouts of the machine a part of human life.

Sholes was first struck by the typewriter during his time as an editor of a newspaper in Milwaukee, where he tried to build a machine for typesetting, however, he failed miserably and later abandoned the idea altogether. Soon after that Sholes and Soule had the opportunity to present their machine to a lawyer and amateur inventor Carolos Glidden, who initially liked the machine but thought it would have been a much more productive machine if it had the ability to produce words rather than just number.

Why are the letters on the keyboard not in alphabetical order?? Great question! That question really puzzled me when I was a kid. And so as a grown-up, I decided to research it and write a paper about it. About years ago, all letters and business papers were written by hand. Most likely they were written using a pen that had to be dipped in ink every word or two.

Writing was slow and messy. Then some clever inventors built a machine for typing. The first typewriters were big heavy metal machines that worked a bit like a piano. Have you ever seen the inside of a real piano? You press a key and some clever levers make a felt hammer hit just the right piano string to make a note. Read more: Curious Kids: How long would garden snails live if they were not eaten by another animal?

Early typewriters were similar. They had all these levers with a metal alphabet letter at the end of it. You had to press a letter key quite hard to make the metal lever fly across and hit the paper. Hit the A key and the A lever would hit the paper and type A. The paper then shifted a bit to the left, so the next key would hit in just the right place next to the A.

Press more keys and you could type a word, or even a whole book. The first machine had the letter keys in alphabetical order. The trouble was that if you hit two keys quickly the levers would jam. Jams were most likely when the two keys were close together on the keyboard. Rearranging the letters could reduce jams. Christopher Sholes was an American inventor who was most successful in reducing jams. He tried various arrangements, always trying to reduce the need to type two keys that were close together.

He sold his invention to the Remington Company in the United States. In the s, that company built and sold the first commercially successful typewriters.

For years or so after the Remington typewriter arrived, vast numbers of people all over the world trained to become touch typists meaning they could type even without looking much at the keyboard. They were employed to type letters and all other kinds of things for business and government. Because so many people became so skilled at using QWERTY, it became very difficult to get everyone to change to any other key arrangement.