Revolutions in Communication
Obfuscation: QWERTY keyboard
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The qwerty keyboard was designed in the 19th century with the express purpose of slowing down typists who jammed their machines because they typed too quickly. This is one of the classic cases of how seeking a solution to a short term process can hamper the development of a whole technology.
The ordering had to do with the design of the first typewriters.
The striking surfaces were arranged in a semi-circle on the end of levers attached to the keys. The striking arms on the left or right edge of the semi-circle where horizontal, and the striking arms in the middle were vertical with the rest varying around the semi-cicrcle from vertical to horizontal.
As the striking arms became more horizontal they tended to bend more due to wear and gravity and hence malfunction more often.
Additionally, the keys in the middle of the keyboard had a less complex mechanical path from the key to the striking arm, which also increased their reliability over the keys towards either edge of the keyboard.
So the clever people designing the typewriter organized the keys so the most popular characters, or what they believed to be the most popular characters, were on the keys as near to the middle of the keyboard as possible while also being on the most vertical striking arms possible without unduly increasing the complexity of the machine.
In other words, they had two variables to work with. The need to be on the most vertical striking arm possible, and the need to be on a key with the least complex mechanical linkage to the striking arm.