See, when people started typing they would go so fast that the mechanical keys would jam up on top of each other a cause the user to untangle

Actually it's a simple mechanical problem....the keys were set so that the likelihood of conflicting [tangling] keys was reduced.

It was nothing to do with the speed of 'typing'...but the simultaneous double keystroke [of any combination] that could cause a clash...in other words...the speed of hitting keys, not the speed of textual, grammatical typing.

The mechanics of a 'hammer' keyboard were always a limiting factor to typing speed, no matter how obscurely the keys were placed, hence the later adopted daisy-wheel and 'magic ball' systems that restricted the typist to one key at a time....no matter how fast he typed.

The reality is that no matter what order the keys are placed most synchronous keystrokes will jam them...

1. Jafo does know everything
2. Jafo never sleeps
3. There have been other keyboard layouts, but none have really caught on enough to dethrone the QWERTY layout, even Microsoft ( a group of folks who know almost as much as Jafo) designed a QWERTY alternative, but it never gained much popularity.

I'll bet Jafo knows!

Ever wonder why the dial pad on a touch tone phone is an inverted version of the Ten Key pad?

Well, is there going to be a answer or was this suppose to be funny.
[Message Edited]

Koasati, pray tell......

Mess up on the phone pad a lot. Who did that?

I know it slows me down and if not I get to talk to the nicest people that I don't know.

Yes, while English language countrie uses the QWERTY keyboard, most French countries for example use the AZERTY keyboard. Their name come from the first 6 letters on the first row.
Indeed, as Jafo explained it, the QWERTY keyboard was invented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes. Its particularity was that it displaced the most frequently used letters in the English language at opposite ends of the keyboard, in order to prevent the typebars to cross over and jam too much.

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