2304: AZERTY & QWERTZ Apr 7, 2021

In addition to the English QWERTY keyboard, there is the French-language AZERTY layout, and the German and Slavic QWERTZ. Granted, many of those have variants to themselves, such as the Swiss keyboard—which is based off the German QWERTZ—but has special keys that either have German diacritics (ÄÖÜ) or French accented letters (ÀÈÉ), but usually for a languages special characters, they will be in the same place, with 2 keys to the right past (P), and 3 past (L).

In the beginning of the 20th century, many alternative keyboards were used but did not catch on in large part because while keyboards were not as widely used as today thanks to computers, the people who used them—mostly secretaries—were trained in QWERTY or AZERTY.

2300: Rocky Origins of QWERTY Apr 3, 2021

The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, marketed as the Remington No. 1, saw the introduction of the QWERTY keyboard, so named for its arrangement of four rows of keys. in the order we are familiar with now around the globe. It was not until the Remington No. 2 however that this would gain any popularity. For one thing, it only had capital letters, and it was not possible to see what was being written as one wrote, known as a blind writer. It was also expensive and took training to operate, with all of these factors and generally poor marketing leading to a popular lack of enthusiasm. Still, the 1874 design did lay the foundation for its more successful successor, and now ubiquity among the adoption of its keyboard layout, at least with English. Other languages such as French will use different arrangements of keys for the same keyboard; in the case of French it is known as the AZERTY. In both cases, there were competitors who introduced other layouts, but these never caught on.