QWERTY

For the story of Qwerty keyboards, we will have to go back 150 years to late 1880 when one Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes was tinkering in his lab in Milwaukee to develop the prototype for typewriters. 

Now the legend has that the Sholes was trying to develop a layout such the expensive typewriting machines won’t get jammed. There is no conclusive evidence to suggest that this was the case and some research has debunked this theory. 

But whatever may be the reason the Querty keyboard didn’t just survive the mechanical typewriters but they also moved to computers and then to the touchscreen based devices. If the touchscreen based devices were developed without the existence of Querty, maybe the layout would be very different. Sholes had multiple designs and patents and this one that he got patented in Aug 27 1878, has the “QWERTY” on it. See the picture below

 

Why so Ubiquitous?

So is Qwerty unchallenged for last 150 years and has been ruling the scene. That may not be right as Latham himself had other patents and layout. But few things have life of their own. Latham had sold his Patent to Remington who were making guns at that time. They manufactured thousands of Typewriters and also offered training for people at low cost. Fate of the keyboard was decided in 1893 when five major manufacturers of Typewriters Remington, Caligraph, Yost, Densmore, and Smith-Premier merged together to form to United Typewriter Company and they agreed to make Qwerty as defacto standard.

Also in 1930, there was another contender called Dvorak Simplified Keyboard developed by Dr. August Dvorak which was supposed to be faster and easier. But it purported benefits never picked up so much to derail Qwerty. 

So next time you use the Keyboard anywhere, remember to pay homage to the tinkerer in Milwaukee. Who created something not realizing that after years of him not being there, almost anyone who uses Latin letters would be using his designed layout. 

There are few things that succeed no matter what 🙂

This has probably been followed by more recent technological giants like Apple with their App Ecosystem or Electronic Design Automation companies by giving cheaper/free licenses to colleges to teach their or Intel /Microsoft by using the Independent Software Vendors to develop code for their chips or OSes.