QWERTY Keyboard (Sholes, Glidden and Soule, 1872)

The QWERTY keyboard, which has now become the standard keyboard layout, was originally designed for the following reasons:

• Designed to follow arrangement of type in a printer's case
• Designed to slow down typing to avoid type-bars jamming
• Designed to contain the word 'TYPEWRITER' in the top row to help salespeople

DVORAK Keyboard (Dvorak, 1943)

Designed to remedy the following 6 defects the standard QWERTY keyboard:

• Overloading of the weaker left hand
• Overworking certain fingers, underworking others
• Too little typing on the home row, too much on upper and lower rows
• Excessive row to row finger movement
• Too few words can be typed on the home row
• Too many words typed exclusively with the left hand