Nobody really knows why the keys are placed as they are. One theory says that letters that commonly go together are spaced apart because the early typewriters had those tiny bars that tangled as they sprang up against the paper. But if that’s true, why are E and R next to each other? And why are so many oft-used letters on the left side? Thousands of words can be spelled with the left hand only, but only a couple hundred with the right hand.

QWERTY’s existence is less a mystery than why it has survived. Its inventor didn't believe in it; a year before his death he filed a patent for a different layout. Yet here we are, fingers touching for F and J, tethered to an arrangement that maybe was designed for translating Morse code, or for salesmen pecking "TYPEWRITER" on one row, or that just emerged, strange and unintuitive, through trial and error.

Regardless, it has long since fossilized into cultural norm, an omnipresent aspect of our environment. From the 1874 Sholes and Gidden typewriter to IBM Selectric, Word, and AI—it all makes writing faster. How nice it would be if technological efficiency equaled intellectual and creative efficiency. But whether we compose longhand or on a computer—hands hovering to find F and J, to form whatever words we need—none of it speeds up good writing. Good writing takes time, takes polishing until, we hope, it shines. And then, pinky hovering over “return”, we must Send.

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Special thanks to Peter Wallace for suggesting the QWERTY keyboard.

Links:

• “The QWERTY Keyboard Will Never Die. Where Did the 150-Year-Old Design Come From?” by Jimmy Stamp; updated by Ellen Wexler, Smithsonian Magazine, May 2013 / February 2025.

  
  

• QWERTY - Wikipedia

  
  

• “The QWERTY keyboard: Who invented it, and how?” by Ryan Crosbie, Medium, January 21, 2017.

  
  

• The KALQ keyboard, recently developed for typing with thumbs - Wikipedia

  
  

• “Looking to Ditch Twitter? Morse Code Is Back,” by Larry Kahaner, Smithsonian Magazine, January/February 2023

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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