[willtjam]

Ursprungligen postat av Spartansk

Va? Jag har hört tvärtom, att damer (ja, detta var innan jämställdheten) som jobbade som skrivmaskins-skrivare började skriva så snabbt så att maskinerna hakade upp sig hela tiden. För att kontra det problemet så satte man bokstäverna i den konfiguration som fick dem att skriva så långsamt som möjligt. Och att detta då har levt kvar till datorerna.

Nästan:

Firstly, characters were mounted on metal arms or typebars, which would clash and jam if neighboring arms were depressed at the same time or in rapid succession.[4] Secondly, its printing point was located beneath the paper carriage, invisible to the operator, a so-called "up-stroke" design. Consequently, jams were especially serious, because the typist could only discover the mishap by raising the carriage to inspect what he had typed. The solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs (like "th" or "st") so that their typebars were not neighboring, avoiding jams. A popular myth is that QWERTY was designed to "slow down" typists because it was causing the typewriters to block therefore it was designed to prevent jams[4] while typing at speed, allowing typists to type faster.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty