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Why are the letters all mixed up on the typewriter keyboard?

Early typewriters produced a letter when a key that was attached by a lever to a typebar was struck. At the end of each of the typebars was a raised letter that would strike an inked ribbon and make an impression on paper when the appropriate key was pressed. The problem with early keyboard models, which were arranged alphabetically, was that the bars of the machine would jam when one attempted to type quickly. As a result, in 1872, American printer and editor Christopher Latham Scholes devised the modern keyboard design, the top bar of which begins "QWERTY." With this letter arrangement, the type bars hit the inked ribbon from opposite directions, resulting in less jamming.

In 1873, the Remington Fire Arms Company bought the patent (a government document that grants an inventor the sole right to manufacture his or her invention for a...

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