QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down the typing speed

Christopher Latham Sholes’s 1878 QWERTY keyboard layout

People boast about their writing speed on a typewriter or keyboard. It is even a competitive advantage for some jobs to have faster and accurate typing skills. But do you know the current layout of the QWERTY keyboards is the outcome of a solution designed to slow down the typing speed?

The initial versions of typewriters made in the 1870s had few technical issues. The metal arms, which hold the characters, used to clash and jam if the keys were pressed in rapid succession or if a typist pressed the adjacent keys simultaneously.

To avoid the problem and have a better typing experience, Christopher Latham Sholes made many design alterations to the keyboard layout. The current layout of the QWERTY keyboards was finally designed by E. Remington and Sons, which solved the problem of jammed type bars.