Object Origins
The QWERTY Sabotage: Our Keyboards Were Literally Designed to Slow Us Down
Why do we use QWERTY? It was designed in 1873 to solve a mechanical problem (typewriter jams) that no longer exists. By separating common letter pairs, it prevented the machine from clogging. While scientifically superior layouts like Dvorak exist, the massive global 'muscle memory' of the QWERTY layout makes shifting to a better system economically impossible.
Discover why the QWERTY keyboard layout is designed to be inefficient. It wasn't built for speed; it was built to solve a mechanical problem from 1873.
January 10, 2026 • By Ethan Hunt