The History of the QWERTY Layout

The layout under your fingers was designed for 1870s typewriters. Here is why we still use it.

QWERTY was devised by Christopher Latham Sholes in the early 1870s for one of the first commercial typewriters. A popular story claims the layout was designed to slow typists down to prevent mechanical jams, but the truth is more nuanced: it was arranged to separate common letter pairs so the type bars were less likely to clash.

Once typists learned QWERTY and manufacturers standardized on it, the layout became locked in by sheer network effect. Retraining millions of people and retooling every factory for a theoretically better layout was never worth the disruption, a classic example of path dependence in technology.

Alternatives like Dvorak and Colemak promise more efficient finger travel, and some enthusiasts swear by them. But for the vast majority of people, mastering QWERTY fully delivers excellent speed without the painful months of retraining a new layout demands.