Why are the keyboards “QWERTY” and not “ABCDE”?
Everyone knows what a QWERTY keyboard is. We all use one of these peripherals every day and yet few know the origin of that seemingly absurd key combination.
None of us were born when this style of keyboard was first adopted, in 1873, although it is true that the design and patent actually date back to a few years earlier, 1868 by Christopher Sholes (however, he sold the patent to him to Remington in 1873 which was when it began to be used). Obviously, the name of this layout comes from the first six letters that appear in the top row of keys.
The reason why the keys have been placed in this order and not in another was to solve a problem that existed precisely at that time.
The keys of the mechanical typewriters machines used at that time were arranged in alphabetical order some people ended up writing so extremely fast on these typewriters so the springs that hit the tape on the paper were stuck causing failure of the machine.
To solve this problem Christopher Sholes, an American inventor and journalist developed QWERTY layout in 1967 so that the keys are placed in such a way that the most used letters are spaced from each other so that the metal rods do not collide with each other when typing.
After the invention of QWERTY keyboards it became so popular and widespread in last 150 years, that this random arrangement became standard.
Variants of QWERTY
The QWERTY keyboard has been relatively adapted over time, and it actually has different versions for some languages. There are countries like Germany that exchange the letters Y for Z, with what they become QWERTZ keyboards; in France and Belgium there are more changes and the first six keys have the AZERTY sequence
But despite the fact that the QWERTY distribution is the most widely used in the world