Why is the keyboard not in alphabetical order?

The QWERTY is the most common keyboard layout. Slowly this becomes the universal keyboard layout. But the situation was not the same. In early days different typewriters offered different layouts and there was no such thing as a standard.

In the early days, people use a mechanical typewriter to type. The problem with an early mechanical typewriter is if you type too fast on it the keys may jammed. Also if an error occurred it was very difficult to find if and rectify, as the writing process commit inside the machine. So people were searching for a solution.

In the year 1873, Christopher Sholes designed the QWERTY layout to avoid type-bar jamming and reduce typing errors. Latter Remington started making commercial typewriters using Sholes’ design. This is how the first commercially successful typewriter was invented. And since then it’s been the dominant keyboard layout. Although some other keyboard layouts were designed latter, they haven’t yet threatened QWERTY’s dominance.

Some other keyboard layouts

Although the QWERTY is the most used keyboard layout, there are several other types of keyboard available in the market.

Dvorak

It was developed by William Dealey and August Dvorak in the year 1936 to improve typing experience and make it fast. It is the second most popular keyboard layout after QWERTY.

AZERTY

It is a France keyboard layout used in some parts of Europe. This layout has many variants.

QWERTZ

It’s a German keyboard layout and used in some parts of Europ. This keyboard has Swiss, Latin, Slovak, Romanian, Polish, Hungarian and German QWERTZ keyboard.

HCESAR

It’s a keyboard that was designed by the Portuguese government to reduce the uses of the QWERTY layout. It was designed in the year 1937. The impractical designs cause complete obsoletion of this layout.

Colemak

It is the most recent and scientifically designed keyboard layout. In 2006 Shai Coleman designed this keyboard layout. They blame that, using this keyboard, a person can type 2.2X faster than the QWERTY keyboard layout.

MALTRON

Maltron is famous for its ergonomic keyboard design. Their designs are unique and they blame these are faster than the regular keyboard.

Although several inventors design many keyboard layouts, no one places the keys in alphabetical order.