More people use the QWERTY keyboard today than ever before, whether you learned to type with ten fingers on a typewriter, two thumbs on an iPhone, or even if you type in anagrams on a bluetooth keyboard like I do. It's what we are all used to. But it's not the best layout, nor is it even mediocre. An efficient keyboard layout would group the most used letter keys together, and have vowels on one side, so that you'd be alternating your hands for most words. The problem is that learning a new keyboard layout is a lot of work.
So why do our keyboards start with QWERTY? For a long time, no one knew, because the Remington Company that produced it never told us. But we eventually figured it out, and the revelation is like finding out you've spent decades doing more work that you needed to. Half as Interesting is glad to explain that. The video is seven minutes long; the rest is an ad. -via Damn Interesting