"Why are the keys on a typewriter or computer keyboard arranged in such a strange way? Why not in a much more sensible fashion? If you've ever typed quickly on a mechanical typewriter, you'll know the reason: the type hammers move up and down so quickly that they can collide and jam together. Then you have to reach into the guts of the machine to disentangle them, getting ink and oil all over yourself in the process. To reduce the risk of that happening, the designer of the first popular typewriter, Christopher Latham Sholes (1819–1890), rearranged the keyboard so letters often-used were spaced widely apart. For example, if you type the word P-R-O-B-A-B-L-Y very quickly, your fingers have to keep leaping from one side of the keyboard to the other as you go from one key to the next. That gives each type hammer time to fall back down and get out of the way of the next hammer that's about to rise up, reducing the risk of a jam. Now computer keyboards are entirely electronic, there's no reason at all to keep the QWERTY keyboard layout. We keep it because most people know it—and for no other reason." --Chris Woodford, http://www.explainthatstuff.com/typewriter.html
