Did you ever wonder why the computer keyboard has the design it does? It is called QWERTY, named after the first six letters located under the numbers, where you might expect to see ABCDEF.
The reason for this oddity is that the keyboard was designed in the 1870s for primitive mechanical typewriters. Some typebars (bars with letters on the end) kept hitting one another, stopping the flow of writing. By separating the most-used letters, the QWERTY layout reduced clashes of this kind (and in the process probably slowed down the typist).
But why do we have the same keyboard today, long after typebars no longer run into one another—in fact, typebars having long ago disappeared? That is the subject of a debate that reflects different views of how markets operate. Continue reading “Battle of the Keys: Why Do We Have QWERTY?”
