>QWERTY was supposedly designed for typewriters to solve a very specific problem–to keep the types from jamming against each other. The most frequently used keys were placed apart from each other to prevent them from jamming. This results in a non-ergonomic layout. However, there are alternatives.
That paper presents a good case that the layout was influenced by feedback from telegraph operators, but it doesn't really do much to refute the idea that changes were also being made for the purpose of preventing jams.
Obviously the claim that it was intended to slow typists down is unlikely. If the layout was rearranged in part to prevent jams, then it would have been rearranged so that nearby letters weren't hit in sequence. Without careful study of ergonomics, one wouldn't necessarily realize that that would slow a typist down. But it would probably prevent jams.
I also found some of the claims made in the paper very odd. They claim that because "SE" and "Z" are easy to mistake in Morse code, that those letters were placed near each other. How this would be helpful eludes me.
No, I'm pretty sure he got it right. That article's correct in saying it wasn't intentionally designed to slow typists down. It was however arranged so that letters frequently typed after one another weren't on neighbouring typebars, because that did cause jams in early typewriters.
Also, the correlation between the position of the bars and the position of the keys were not obvious in the first Sholes & Gidden typewriter. Some bars for adjacent keys were actually very far from each other.
By the way, the jamming problem basically went away with the Remington II. QWERTY was obsolete less than 20 years after its inception.
Although it's great that you shared this article so more people know about the history of QWERTY, I don't think it should be the top voted comment; what QWERTY was or wasn't designed for is interesting, but what matters is what it is like to use it in practice now. I am more interested in a discussion about whether or not this Workman layout works as advertised and is worth the effort of switching to.
QWERTY was designed so that all the characters in the word "TYPEWRITER" were located in the top row :) And this is quite easy to verify - coincidence? Does it improve its ergonomy? Well I'm not typing "typewriter" all day long, but first salesmen who marketed the device - did :) They're long gone, however, but suboptimal layout remained. As the man said, there's nothing more permanent than temporary solutions...
Nope: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-li...