Edit: Thank you to all those who responded! It’s so fun to learn from your explanations
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As an additional point, the jamming problem only really happened on very early typewriters. By the time typewriters became common enough for it to matter, the mechanisms had been changed and jamming wasn’t a problem. But it was too late to change the layout – it had already become too popular.
Note also that the letters ‘close together’ were letters with their arms next to each other, That meant letters like ‘r’ and ‘f’. Letters that are beside each other on the keyboard, like ‘a’ and ‘s’, ‘r’ and ‘t’ had their arms far enough apart so they could be close-ish together to make typing easier (for a hunt-and-peck typist, which was everyone in the early days) without risking jams.
No, I can’t explain ‘e’ and ‘d’. A very common letter pairing with their arms next to each other. Perhaps the earliest design had some kind of gap between those letters?
Lastly, an important feature of this layout is that a salesman could quickly type ‘typewriter’ using only the top row.
This is a topic of debate. The early keyboards used on typewriters came in all different configurations. Most of them were in some form of alphabetical order although some had their keys ordered from the frequency of use or other less common layouts. The typewriters were developed by private companies and they usually kept their research and design decisions as trade secrets and most of it have been lost over time. So the only thing we have remaining is examples of these typewriters and their manuals and advertisements. The first typewriter that featured the qwerty layout was marketed as being hard to jam. The issue that many early typewriters suffered with was that the leavers connected to each key would have some overlap in their motion. So if you managed to strike certain keys at once or at least close together then they might jam together. This would slow down typing speed as the operators would have to clear the jam and slow down to prevent further jams.
The topic of discussion is how the qwerty layout solved this issue if at all. As I said we only have the advertisement to go by as well as the success of that machine as the design was bought up by the big manufacturer remington and was being copied by all other typewriter manufacturer. Some say the layout is designed to slow down the typist to avoid jams. Another theory is that the layout allows the jams to be mostly a problem with seldom used key combinations. It is also possible that the layout had nothing to do with the jams and that the other design features of the model were the reason for the typewriters success.
The first and only study on the typing speed of different layouts were conducted by Doctor Dvorak some decades later and this resulted in a very different layout. And even though no independent studies have been conducted on this subject his layout was for a long time favored by speed typeing champions.
When the original manual typewriter was invented, the buttons on the typewriter had to be pressed to make a little metal hammer, with each individual letter, strike the piece of paper.
The letters that were used most often were placed on the center line (where we position our hands for typing originally). The letters that needed the most pressure were placed to the center of the typewriter so that the strongest fingers (the index and middle fingers) could apply the pressure. The least used and keys that needed the least pressure were put on the outside to be pressed with the pinky fingers.
Now that computers don’t need the different pressure to make the same keystroke, there have been petitions to change the keyboard layout, something more like an alphabetical order layout. You can order these on the internet, but most people find them hard to use and go back to original style.
You can train your brain to use a different keyboard layout, but like any new skill, it takes time and practice. Humans are creatures of habit and change isn’t something we normally like. That’s why we have held on to the keyboard layout from the original manual typewriters.
They were designed when typewriters were commonly in use. The keys were arranged in a way that made the typewriters get jammed less often (this was a pretty big problem). Modern keyboards just continued using the same format because typists were already used to it.
They are arranged so that the most frequently used letters are in the easiest to reach spots
The keys are arranged to minimize the number of times you need to press keys that are right next to each other (because that jams mechanical typewriters), and to ensure you use both hands as much as possible, because that makes for better typing. For whatever reason if you stick to one hand for a long time you end up making more typos.
In modern times, more optimal layouts like Dvorak have been devised, but it didn’t catch on.
There’s many different arrangements but the common US qwerty arrangement has to do with in the old timey days The typewriters would jam.
A dvorak keyboard is designed for programmer optimism.
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