QWERTY refers to a standard English-language typewriter keyboard layout (sometimes called the Sholes keyboard after its inventor), as opposed to Dvorak or foreign-language layouts or APL keyboard. It is sometimes said that it was designed to slow down the typist, but this is wrong; it was designed to allow faster typing - under a constraint now long obsolete. In early typewriters, fast typing using nearby type-bars jammed the mechanism. So Sholes fiddled the layout to separate the letters of many common digraphs (he did a far from perfect job, though; `th', `tr', `ed', and `er', for example, each use two nearby keys). Also, putting the letters of ` typewriter' on one line allowed it to be typed with particular speed and accuracy for demonstrations. The jamming problem was essentially solved soon afterwards by a suitable use of springs, but the keyboard layout lives on. Research QWERTY
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Research QWERTY
