Keyboard: Why are the letters written backwards and forwards on the keyboard? What is this QWERTY puzzle?

If you have ever looked at the keyboard, then a question must have come to mind, "Why are these letters placed back and forth like this? Why are they not placed in the order of A, B, C, D...?" If yes, then you will be surprised to know that this has been done intentionally.

There is a very interesting story hidden behind this, which is related to the era of typewriters. Let's know what this story is.

Typewriter and 'jam' problem

Before today's digital keyboard, typewriters were used for writing. In the late 19th century, when the first typewriters were being made, there was a big technical problem with them. The letters in them were engraved on metal rods, which, on pressing the key, would come down from top to bottom and press the ink ribbon to print the letters on the paper.

When someone typed at a high speed and the keys of two adjacent letters were pressed together, their metal rods would get entangled and stuck. This would stop typing, and many times the typewriter had to be opened and the rods had to be separated, which was a very time-consuming and troublesome task.

Christopher Sholes and the birth of the QWERTY layout

To solve this problem, Christopher Latham Sholes thought of a simple but very interesting solution. He thought, why not arrange the letters in such a way that the pairs of the most used letters, such as 'TH', 'HE', 'IN', 'ER', etc., are kept away from each other on the keyboard. This will greatly reduce the chances of their rods coming together and getting stuck.

Sholes studied the statistics of the English language and designed a new keyboard layout based on the need for letters. The result of this design was the QWERTY layout, whose name is derived from the first six letters (Q-W-E-R-T-Y) of the first row of the keyboard.

Success of QWERTY

In the 1870s, a company started making typewriters with this' design of Sholes. This typewriter was very successful and gradually took over the market. As millions of people learned to type on this QWERTY layout, it became a standard.

Later, even though the technical limitations of typewriters were overcome and electric and then digital keyboards were introduced, QWERTY had become so popular that it was not changed. Almost the entire population of the world had become accustomed to this layout. That is why even today the QWERTY layout is seen on keyboards.

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