Why keyboard alphabets are not in order?

The computer is such a fascinating tool. It has brought together so many people into a path of high efficiency and awareness. The simple box like structure that is sitting on our tables can compute advanced calculations and algorithms, provide great entertainment and even solve the many problems that were perceived to be unsolvable before. It has made our lives so much easier. By pressing a single button we can unlock the various mysteries of life. But it isn’t as simple as that because there are various components to a computer, components that work in harmony to produce such wondrous results.

The keyboard is an essential part of the computer. It is through the keyboard that we communicate with others on the internet and perform various other writing activities. Anyone who has seen the keyboard will surely have had pondered over the order of the keyboard alphabets. Logically it would be far easier if the keyboard alphabets were arranged in order as in A-Z. But the keyboard isn’t arranged so. Instead it uses the QWERTY system for placing the keyboard alphabets.

It is with a great sense of irony that the keyboard alphabets are arranged in this way. Many years ago when typewriters were all the rage, people found the system of organizing the typewriter keys in the real order to be very troubling. The first commercial typewriter had its keys in order. Because of this, typing became very easy and the speed of typing increased vastly with experience. Due to this, many keys started jamming or getting stuck. Some keys even broke.

Christopher Latham Sholes who developed the system decided to make it more difficult for the users to type at such raging speeds in order to prevent the keys from getting damaged. So he distanced the various keys that were frequently used while typing. Thus the QWERTY system was implemented which then passed over to the computers. The irony is that a device such as the computer which is known for maximizing efficiency utilizes a system for typing that was made to be inefficient.

The QWERTY keyboard is also known as the universal keyboard as it has been implemented as a standard for keyboards all over the world.