The arrangement of letters on a computer keyboard is a legacy of typewriters, which appeared in the 19th century.
The operating principle of this machine is simple. When you strike a key with a letter with your finger, a lever (hammer) with a cast matrix of this letter on top is activated. He hits a ribbon soaked in ink and located between the paper and the hammer, thus leaving an imprint on the paper. When typing, the hammers alternately hit the drum with paper.
On the first typewriters, invented by Christopher Scholes, the letters on the keys were located in alphabetical order, in two rows. In addition, printing could only be done in capital letters, and there were no numbers 1 and 0 at all. They were successfully replaced by the letters "I" and "O". At first, this suited everyone. However, over time, the printing speed became increasingly faster, and then a serious problem emerged with such machines: individual hammers did not have time to return to their place and were constantly interfering with each other. Very often, attempts to separate them led to the machines breaking down.
And this happened because in the English alphabet there are a lot of neighboring letters that are used more often than others (for example, p-r, n-o). The result was often that adjacent keys were pressed one after another, which led to the hammers sticking and jamming.
Manufacturers of typewriters drew conclusions and developed a keyboard in which letters often found in texts were placed away from the index fingers (after all, before the invention of the “blind” ten-finger method, people typed mainly with the index fingers). This is how the famous QWERTY keyboard layout appeared (according to the first letters of the top row from left to right), which is still used today. It migrated to computer keyboards, although on them the problem of clutching levers (hammers) does not exist at all.
QWERTY keyboard
It must be admitted that the arrangement of letters on a QWERTY keyboard is far from the most rational. Much more convenient is the layout invented by Arthur Dvorak, professor of statistics at the University of Washington. In it, frequently used letters are in the middle and top rows. Under the left hand in the middle row are all the vowels, and under the right hand are the most common consonants.
This makes the load on your hands more balanced. Judge for yourself: in an 8-hour working day, our fingers travel about 2 km on a Dvorak keyboard, while on a traditional QWERTY keyboard the same figure is already 7 kilometers. Accordingly, the typing speed on a Dvorak keyboard is 2 times higher compared to a QWERTY keyboard.
Dvorak keyboard
How are things going with the Russian keyboard? Why are the letters on it arranged in this order and not otherwise? The fact is that in Russia typewriters, like all technical innovations, appeared much later than in the West. By this time, many design flaws had already been eliminated. And the Russian keyboard was initially designed as ergonomic, that is, with a convenient and rational arrangement of keys. The most commonly used letters were placed under the strongest and fastest index fingers, and the less frequently used letters were placed under the weaker ring and little fingers.
Unfortunately, the Russian computer keyboard also has disadvantages. For example, for the comma, which is used, you see, very often, they did not bother to allocate a separate key, but placed it on the same key on which the period is located - in uppercase! Therefore, in order to type a comma, you need to press two keys. Maybe that’s why modern schoolchildren who love to surf the Internet so often miss commas?..
The ancestors of today's computer keyboard are typewriters, which you probably saw in old movies. The first of them appeared in the 19th century. There were many models, but they all worked on the same principle. There were keys on the surface of the machine. Keys with a certain letter set the hammer in motion. The hammer on the top had a three-dimensional matrix of the same letter as on the key. He hit the tape. The tape was soaked in paint and placed between the hammer and the paper, on which each letter was imprinted. The hammers took turns drumming on the paper, typing entire texts.
The first successful typewriters were the invention of K. Scholes. The letters on such copies were arranged alphabetically on two rows. They were all the same size, appearing only in capital letters. There were no numbers on this keyboard. They were successfully replaced by some letters of the English alphabet. People typing on such machines over time, gaining skill, began to type faster than before. And suddenly it turned out that the machine could not work at such a printing speed. 
And the whole point is that the hammers, when imprinting letters, must have time to return to their original position. But they didn’t succeed. Moreover, they often began to get confused and interlock, and it took precious time to separate the hammers, and often, due to the interlacing, the machine simply became unusable.
It turns out that the English alphabet is rich in neighboring letters; they are used more often than others. When successively pressing neighboring keys, the hammers could interlock and jam.
Manufacturers thought about this problem and decided that it was necessary to create a new keyboard on which the letters would be arranged differently. Special tables were studied that showed the frequency of use of various combinations of letters in words. Those letters whose combinations occurred most frequently were placed far from each other on the keyboard. Now the hammers of these letters worked without intersecting.
Working on such a keyboard allows you to type at high speed, and this layout, which is still used throughout the world, allows you to work with all fingers. You are probably already familiar with her too. It's called QWERTY. Look at the top row of keys. The first five keys from left to right are indicated by these letters.
There are no complex hammer mechanisms on a computer keyboard, and it would seem that such an arrangement of letters is not necessary at all, but everyone is so accustomed to this layout that they simply use it without thinking about why the letters are arranged this way.
Many scientists are still developing new layouts that will help type text even faster, while putting less strain on your hands.
A. Dvorak, a professor at the University of Washington, came up with his own version of the layout. The most common letters occupy the middle and top rows. On the left hand are frequent vowels, and on the right hand are frequent consonants.
The professor claims that the load when using his keyboard is gentle. Just imagine that in a whole working day, fingers, using the professor’s layout, cover a distance of 2 km on the keys. On a classic QWERTY layout, such work will take a longer distance of 7 km.
Please note that in addition to English letters on the keyboard, Russian ones are also placed in a special order. They are arranged according to the following scheme: the index fingers work with the most used letters of the alphabet, and the ring and little fingers get all the rest.
When someone sees a computer keyboard for the first time, the question arises, “Why are the letters on the keys not in alphabetical order?” In this article we provide a comprehensive answer to this question.
Look at your computer keyboard. Isn't it true that it is difficult to find logic in such an arrangement of letters? The letters are not in their usual positions - according to the alphabet, the letter "A" should be located at the beginning of the first row of keys. Wouldn't this be the ideal solution? Or the letter "W" being on the first line instead of the last. This arrangement of letters is called the “QWERTY” layout - based on the first 6 letters on the keyboard. So why complicate everything and not make the keyboard clear and convenient?
To understand the logic of the arrangement of letters according to the “QWERTY” standard, we must go back in time, to the end of the 19th century, when K. Scholes introduced the first typewriter with this arrangement of letters. At that time, the arrangement of letters on typewriters was in alphabetical order. But a technical problem awaited the manufacturers. The typewriter had metal arcs with letters at the ends. And when quickly printing text, if the printed letters were nearby, these arcs interlocked with each other. This took some time, and the typists' overall productivity dropped.
To solve this problem, K. Scholes compiled a list of the most common combinations of letters in English words and, after studying it, came up with a new layout. Now, although typing speed has slowed slightly, adjacent letters in words have been spaced out across the keyboard, reducing the likelihood of arcs interfering.
With the advent of computers in the 40s of the 20th century, typewriters were supplanted by new devices, and now it was possible to return a layout with keys in alphabetical order to keyboards (already computers). However, there was a problem: the people who typed on computers were the same people who typed on typewriters. They needed to relearn the new layout. However, companies did not want to spend money on retraining employees, and it was decided to leave the keyboard layout.
- On the existing layout you can find a little from the alphabetical layout. Looking at the middle row of keys, you will find the letters "DFGHJKL" arranged in alphabetical order, excluding "E" and "I";
- The eight keys on the middle row of the keyboard are called the "home row". These are the keys that you should place your fingers on in order to type faster;
- The QWERTY keyboard is more suitable for left-handed people, since there are letters on the left side that can be used to type more words than using the right side of the keyboard;
- you can find all the letters of the word “typewriter” on the top line of your keyboard.
As we have seen, typewriters are to blame for today's difficulties with keyboards. However, we are so accustomed to the existing layout that we even introduced it into mobile phones.
Every day we are faced with dozens of secrets. And to find them, it is not at all necessary to spy on someone else’s personal life and fish out someone’s skeletons from closets. Just looking around is enough.
One of the everyday mysteries is at your fingertips right now. Why are the letters on the keyboard arranged in such a strange order? 
Let's try to figure it out.
Do you think you are fast at typing on your keyboard? Do you make a lot of mistakes? Perhaps if the letters were arranged in alphabetical order, things would be much more productive? Japanese researchers asked themselves this question and tried to find out why, instead of the “normal” arrangement of keys, the whole world uses the QWERTY (or in the Russian version YTSUKEN) layout. Documents were raised, answers were found, and at the same time, two popular myths about the origin of the modern keyboard were debunked.
Myth 1: The QWERTY layout was designed for fast typing and because of the low “popularity” of individual letters
This version is the most common and quite logical. At first sight. But field studies have shown that if subjects used exclusively a specially designed keyboard with a different letter arrangement for some time, they got used to it. And the typing speed was practically no different from working with QWERTY.
Myth 2: the keyboard is a descendant of the typewriter, and there the QWERTY order helped to avoid freezing
This version was completely opposite to the first. Its essence was that the unusual and “illogical” arrangement of the keys on the typewriter was supposed to slightly confuse typists. They could not print at high speed and, accordingly, the machine did not freeze. And everyone was happy. But the counterargument to the interesting theory lies on the surface: mechanical memory. This was also proven by the experiment from the previous paragraph. Over time, we adapt to any conditions, so you can learn to type quickly and almost blindly on an “illogical” keyboard.
Truth: thanks to Morse code
It turned out that the first prototypes of modern keyboards were equipped with an alphabetical layout. And they began to “test” them on telegraph operators. Testers who had to quickly transcribe messages found the alphabetical order annoyingly awkward. And in order to work with Morse code more efficiently, they offered their own option - QWERTY. The proposal was heard, and within a few years all telegraphs switched to QWERTY. And behind them comes the rest of the printed world.
18.03.2012 2 14158
When someone sees a computer keyboard for the first time, the question arises, “Why are the letters on the keys not in alphabetical order?” In this article we provide a comprehensive answer to this question.
Look at your computer keyboard. Isn't it true that it is difficult to find logic in such an arrangement of letters? The letters are not in their usual positions - according to the alphabet, the letter "A" should be located at the beginning of the first row of keys. Wouldn't this be the ideal solution? Or the letter "W" being on the first line instead of the last. This arrangement of letters is called the “QWERTY” layout - based on the first 6 letters on the keyboard. So why complicate everything and not make the keyboard clear and convenient?
To understand the logic of the arrangement of letters according to the “QWERTY” standard, we must go back in time, to the end of the 19th century, when K. Scholes introduced the first typewriter with this arrangement of letters. At that time, the arrangement of letters on typewriters was in alphabetical order. But a technical problem awaited the manufacturers. The typewriter had metal arcs with letters at the ends. And when quickly printing text, if the printed letters were nearby, these arcs interlocked with each other. This took some time, and the typists' overall productivity dropped.
To solve this problem, K. Scholes compiled a list of the most common combinations of letters in English words and, after studying it, came up with a new layout. Now, although typing speed has slowed slightly, adjacent letters in words have been spaced out across the keyboard, reducing the likelihood of arcs interfering.
With the advent of computers in the 40s of the 20th century, typewriters were supplanted by new devices, and now it was possible to return a layout with keys in alphabetical order to keyboards (already computers). However, there was a problem: the people who typed on computers were the same people who typed on typewriters. They needed to relearn the new layout. However, companies did not want to spend money on retraining employees, and it was decided to leave the keyboard layout.
- On the existing layout you can find a little from the alphabetical layout. Looking at the middle row of keys, you will find the letters "DFGHJKL" arranged in alphabetical order, excluding "E" and "I";
- The eight keys on the middle row of the keyboard are called the "home row". These are the keys that you should place your fingers on in order to type faster;
- The QWERTY keyboard is more suitable for left-handed people, since there are letters on the left side that can be used to type more words than using the right side of the keyboard;
- you can find all the letters of the word “typewriter” on the top line of your keyboard.
As we have seen, typewriters are to blame for today's difficulties with keyboards. However, we are so accustomed to the existing layout that we even introduced it into mobile phones.