Have you ever wondered why the keyboard on our smartphones, computer
systems etc use the same QWERTY format to lay out keys instead of ABCDE? It is
also important you know that QWERTY keyboard is the universal keyboard used
globally today.
When you look at your keyboard, you will notice that the first six letters
in the key row starts with QWERTY. But why not use ABCDE instead? Well there
are a number of reasons why we use QWERTY instead of ABCDE.
The first typewriter was created by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and it had
only 28 keys arranged from A to Z. At that time, various telegraph operators
used typewriters arranged in alphabetical order to understand the Morse codes.
However, the alphabetical layout of the keyboard made it difficult to for
telegraph operators to decode and thus, it didn’t help in fastening their work.
In response to their plight, the QWERTY keyboard was made after receiving
several suggestions from different telegraph operators. The new keyboard worked
like a charm.
There’s also another story why the keyboard was changed from ABCDE to
QWERTY. When the mechanical typewriters were produced, they also had their keys
laid out in an alphabetical order and because of its ABCDE layout, people typed
so fast that the mechanical characters arms jammed frequently.
In order to prevent the keys from jamming, the QWERTY keyboard was
introduced with the aim of slowing down typing so as to prevent keys from
jamming!