The QWERTY arrangement of our keyboards was originally intended to make typing SLOWER.
Christopher Latham Sholes invented the first practical typewriter in 1873. These early models tended to have a slow type bar mechanism, so Sholes rearranged his keyboard from an alphabetized format to one in which the most common pairs of letters were spread far apart!
Since typing at this time resorted to the “hunt and peck” technique (as opposed to the 10-finger typing that we do now), this arrangement ensured that each type bar would be out of the way before a new keystroke was made, so that the machine wouldn't jam. Sholes never even dreamed that typing could ever be faster than writing by hand!
