QWERTY keyboard

… A lot of doctors before me have made similar studies and reached similar conclusions that normality is merely a matter of consensus, that is, a lot of people think something is right, so that thing becomes right.

… Some things are governed by common sense. Other things, however, become fixed because more and more people believe that's the way they should be.

I'll give you two examples. Have you ever wondered why the keys on the typewriter are arranged in that particular order?

No, I haven’t.

We call it the QWERTY keyboard. The first machine was invented by Christopher Scholes, in 1873, to improve calligraphy, but there was a problem: if a person typed very fast, the keys got stuck together and stopped the machine working. Then Scholes designed the QWERTY keyboard; a keyboard that would oblige typists to type more slowly.

I don’t believe it.

But it’s true. It so happened that Remington -who were sewing machine manufacturers at the time- used QWERTY keyboard for their first typewriters. That meant that more people were forced to learn that particular system, and more companies started to make those keyboards, until it became the only model available. To repeat: the keyboard on typewriters and computers was designed so that people would type more slowly, not more quickly, do you understand? If you changed the letters around, you wouldn’t find anyone to buy your product.

Paulo Coelho - Veronika Decides to Die