:fu qwerty: (Dvorak keyboards)

Originally Posted by Moon

Now, why on Earth would you want to use it, you ask? Well, the regular qwerty systemw as developed for typewriters soon after they came out. People were typing so fast that the keys jammed, and rather than just build a better typewriter, they re-arranged the keys in an inefficient way to reduce typing speed. Hence the qwerty system was born.

Close. The QWERTY layout was designed to spread apart frequently used pairs of letters to prevent that sort of jamming, cutting down on the time spent unjamming the type bars and supposedly making it faster to type overall.

Of course, that's not generally a big problem any more.

Jam it back in, in the dark.