1. Sholes's Early Typewriter Keyboard Was Alphabetical
The answer to "why not ABC?" starts with a surprise: the first typewriter keyboard did follow the alphabet. In November 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes, the American inventor of the typewriter, and his partners in Milwaukee shipped their first "Type-Writer" to Chicago. The buyer was not an office. It was Edward Payson Porter, principal of Porter's Telegraph College. The machine had 28 keys laid out like a piano, and the letters ran in alphabetical order, A to N from left to right and O to Z from right to left[1].
That detail matters. Porter's students learned to take down Morse code, the dots-and-dashes system used to send messages over telegraph wires. Porter wanted a machine that could write down a message as fast as the operator at the other end sent it[1].
2. How Telegraph Operators May Have Changed the Key Order
So what pulled the letters away from ABC? Kyoto University researchers Koichi Yasuoka and Motoko Yasuoka traced the keyboard's early years through letters, patents, and surviving machines. They report that by April 1870 the machine had four rows of keys, and that in 1870 the inventors showed it to the telegraph equipment makers Harrington and Craig in New York. Harrington and Craig promised to buy several machines, but wanted improvements, including a different key order[1].
Here is where Morse code comes in. In the American Morse code of that era, the letter Z was sent as a pattern of dots that is easily confused with the two-letter combination S and E, which is far more common. A receiver often could not tell which it was until the following letters arrived. The Yasuokas argue that this is why S ought to sit between Z and E, so a rushed operator could type either option quickly. They also suggest that T, the most common consonant in English, belonged near the center[1]. This is the authors' reading of the evidence, not a statement from the inventors, and it is one influential explanation rather than a settled answer[2]. This interpretation is debated.
3. QWERTY Emerged Through a Series of Redesigns
After Sholes's backer James Densmore signed a manufacturing contract with E. Remington & Sons on March 1, 1873, Remington mechanics Jenne and Clough tried their own changes. They moved the period key and put R next to E, a pairing that shows up constantly in English. Sholes did not like the result and asked for Y to be moved toward the center[1].
The last step was even less about typing. In August 1882, a new company selling the Remington "Standard" No. 2 altered the design to sidestep old patents held by another company. They moved M next to N and swapped C with X. The Yasuokas say that this gave the QWERTY arrangement we use today[1].
In the authors' account, then, QWERTY was not the product of one master plan but of several rounds of changes made by different people. It changed first to suit telegraph receivers, then as a compromise between inventors and manufacturers, and finally to avoid old patents[1].
What about the "slowing people down" story? The researchers point out that the first customers were telegraph receivers, who needed to keep up with the sender, so a slower keyboard would have defeated the purpose. They also checked where the letters' type bars sat in the machine's round basket. The most common pair, T and H, were placed on opposite sides, which fits the jam story. But the next most common pair, E and R, were placed close together, only 16 degrees apart, and Jenne and Clough had moved R there on purpose[1]. A story that explains one pair and fails on the next is not a very strong story.
The same paper also questions a related legend, that R was moved so a salesman could type "TYPE WRITER" using only the top row. The brand name had already been chosen as "Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer" before R was moved[1]. (The top-row coincidence is real, as you can check in the last section.)
4. How QWERTY Became the Standard for Typewriters and Computers
Once several companies adopted the same layout, it stopped mattering whether it was the best one. The Yasuokas report that in 1893 five leading typewriter makers joined to form the Union Typewriter Company, that all five used QWERTY, and that by June 1898 it had become the de facto standard. Then Teletype machines, which sent text over wires, adopted QWERTY in the 1910s, and Teletype was widely used as a computer terminal from the 1940s to the 1970s. That is how computers ended up with it[1].
The researchers note one more surprise: in the 1870s there were no professional typists. The operators were telegraphers and shorthand writers, and they used fingering methods very different from the ten-finger touch typing taught today[1].
5. Why QWERTY Stayed Even After Alternatives Appeared
If QWERTY was not designed for speed, a better layout should have replaced it. The best-known challenger is the Dvorak layout. In the 1930s, a professor named August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, William Dealey, designed a layout meant to be faster and easier on the hands. It was patented in 1936[4]. During World War II, a Navy test reported that 14 typists retrained on the Dvorak layout gained 75 percent in speed[3].
There is a catch. Economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis later found that the Navy study was run by Lieutenant Commander August Dvorak himself, the same man who held the patent. They also report that speeds were measured differently for the two groups of typists, and that evening this out cut the measured gain by almost half[3].
A second, more careful test was run for the U.S. General Services Administration, the federal government's purchasing and office agency, in 1956 by Earle Strong. The trained typists in it had to practice four hours a day for well over 25 days just to get back to their old QWERTY speed, and when a second round of training began, the typists who stayed with QWERTY improved faster[3]. Strong recommended more QWERTY training instead of switching. Some Dvorak supporters have argued that Strong was biased against new layouts[4].
Liebowitz and Margolis conclude that the evidence for a big advantage is weak and that QWERTY did not win by luck alone[3]. Wikipedia's summary of later experiments adds that many layouts allow speeds similar to QWERTY's and Dvorak's once typists have trained on them[4]. Even if a layout were a little better, the practical problem would be the same: retraining millions of people takes a lot of time and effort. That is one reason QWERTY stayed, and why this is better described as a long-lasting standard than as the best possible design.
6. How Other Languages Adapted the QWERTY Layout
QWERTY itself travels well: UK and US keyboards both have the same QWERTY letters and differ mainly in some symbol keys. Other countries bend it a little more. Travel to France and the top row reads AZERTY. The layout appeared there in the last decade of the 19th century as a variation on an earlier "AWERTY" layout that came from American QWERTY typewriters, and its exact origin is unknown. Compared with QWERTY, A and Q are swapped, Z and W are swapped, and M sits beside L. French also has a few letters with accents used so often (à, ç, é, è, ù) that they get their own keys[5].
In Germany and Austria, the layout is QWERTZ, with Y and Z trading places. Wikipedia lists several reasons given for that: Z is far more common than Y in German, where Y mostly shows up in borrowed words; T and Z often sit side by side in German spelling; and the word zu ("to") is easy to type when Z and U are neighbors[6]. German keyboards also have keys for ä, ö, and ü.
The same basic arrangement, bent a little to fit each language. That may be the most honest summary of the QWERTY story: a design nobody planned, reshaped many times for practical reasons.
How to Check the Keyboard Story Yourself
- Type "typewriter" on your keyboard. Every letter is on the top row. That is the trick salesmen were supposedly using. It is a coincidence that makes a good story, not a design goal.
- Find out which layouts your computer or tablet offers. If it is your own device, or an adult says it is okay, try this. In Windows, look in Settings under Time & language, then Language & region, and check the keyboard options for your language. On a Mac, open System Settings, then Keyboard, then Input Sources. See whether you can add a French (AZERTY) or German (QWERTZ) layout, then find where A, Z, and Y moved. Switch back when you are done, since the keys will no longer match what is printed on them.
- Read the original paper. The Yasuokas' article, "On the Prehistory of QWERTY," is free online from Kyoto University and includes drawings of the early keyboards, which you can compare with your own one row at a time.