Why are keyboards QWERTY? Are you ready to say goodbye to QWERTY?

Writing has always been my passion; the keyboard-my best friend! One day, I asked the keyboard, “Why do you spell out as ‘QWERTY’ and not in the serial ‘ABC’ format?”

Have you ever wondered what could be the reason for this peculiar arrangement of letters on the keyboard??

As I set out looking for answers, I read a range of interesting theories and stories. Now, which one would I ideally believe in this sea of misinformation?

One spoke about a famous king named, “QWERTY”, which of course lacked any genuineness and sounded like yet another cheesy bedtime story to me!

The most accepted theory is about Christopher Sholes, an American inventor and journalist, who is known for his contribution to the literature along with inventing the magnificent typewriter. It was believed that he had first designed the letters in the regular alphabetical manner, however, the typists were so used to the order that they seemed to be typing at a herculean speed! PHEW!

When they pressed two closely located keys too quickly, the levers of these letters seemed to jam in these traditional typewriters and Sholes had to find a way to slow them down. That is how he came up with a pattern of “QWERTY” to place letters that have very low chances of being adjacent to one another in a word. But, look at your keyboard, most common combinations like “R-T”, “I-O” and “E-R” are still close by. This theory, hence was later believed to be just another fictional attempt and was debunked.?

Another theory proposes that the QWERTY layout was influenced by telegraph operators. Morse code operators commonly used a telegraph key with a similar arrangement of letters, and Sholes may have adopted this layout for the typewriter to facilitate the transition for telegraph operators. This theory is also backed by a study done by a group of researchers at Kyoto University in 2011.

Over the years, there have been no revisions or attempts to change the layout of these keyboards. This is mostly because the QWERTY layout became so standardised and widely adopted, that switching to a different layout seemed like a task nobody wanted upon themselves!

Today, after decades, we are about to break up with QWERTY. (slow sobs! Pass some tissues) With the excessive use of phones and tablets, typing has mostly switched to maximum usage of thumbs. QWERTY is quite challenging to type with thumbs. Max Planck Institute, University of St Andrews and Montana Tech joined hands together, to come up with a new layout that helps thumb-typing! Yes, no more painful thumbs and weird typos!

Introducing KALQ: the thumb-tastic keyboard revolutionizing touchscreen typing! With vowels snugly nestled under your right thumb and the left thumb taking charge of extra keys, you'll be thumb-typing at warp speed in no time.?

In a recent study, users were thrilled to discover they could type a whopping 34% faster with KALQ compared to the traditional QWERTY layout.?

And guess what? Soon, KALQ will be hitting your Android smartphone screens as a free app. We are excited too! But if you want to share this exciting journey, you have to stay connected to our page, where we share interesting thoughts and concepts!

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