Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers

Why do most of us still type on a keyboard layout designed in the 1870s? The QWERTY arrangement was developed for mechanical typewriters, and a popular explanation is that it was meant to slow typists down so that the metal bars carrying the letters would not jam. Historians who have examined the original patents and letters think the real story is more complicated. The layout went through many versions, and some changes appear to reflect the needs of telegraph operators, who were among the machine's early customers. Whatever its origins, QWERTY spread because a large manufacturer adopted it, typing schools taught it, and offices bought machines that matched the skills of the typists they employed. Economists call this kind of situation path dependence: once a standard is widely used, the cost of switching rises, even if alternatives exist. In the 1930s, an American educator designed a layout that placed the most common letters on the middle row, and he claimed it was much faster. Later studies, however, found that the advantage was small, and that some of the early trials had been run by the designer himself. The case is often cited as proof that markets can lock in inferior technology. A more cautious reading is that QWERTY was good enough, and that retraining millions of typists offered too little benefit to justify the cost.