Why Do We Use a QWERTY Keyboard?

Does the arrangement of letters on a keyboard baffle you? Well, it's been that way since Christopher Sholes invented the typewriter in 1868 (U.S. patent 207,559 in 1878). Though there seems to be no logical reason why our keyboards bear such a weird matrix of letters, QWERTY keyboards have quite a rich history, and the layout is something we've grown accustomed to.

Sholes allegedly studied common letter combinations and then arranged the keys so as to separate commonly used letter combinations to slow down typists and thus prevent his newfangled machine from jamming. There's no documentation to support this statement, though Sholes' attempt to slow you down does make your 85 words p…
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