Sholes and Densmore

• The arrangement first appeared on typewriters in 1874. Christopher Sholes and Amos Densmore are credited with the arrangement. Sholes invented the typewriter in 1868 with the keys in alphabetical order, but fast typists made the keys jam. The QWERTY arrangement was designed to slow the typists down, with Densmore conducting a study of letter-pair frequency. The idea is that most words in the English language require the user to cover more ground on the keyboard.
  
  

Patent and Manufacturing

• Sholes included the QWERTY arrangement on an 1878 patent, even though the machines were already being manufactured. The lettering first appeared on the 1874 Sholes and Glidden typewriter made by E. Remington and Sons.
  
  

Fun Fact

• The word "typewriter" can be written entirely with letters from the first row of keys. Many speculated this was the reason for the arrangement.