The arrangement of characters on a QWERTY keyboard was designed in 1868 by Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter. According to popular myth, Sholes arranged the keys in their odd fashion to prevent jamming on mechanical typewriters by separating commonly used letter combinations. However, there is no evidence to support this assertion, except that the arrangement does, in fact, inhibit fast typing.

With the emergence of ball-head electric typewriters and computer keyboards, on which jamming is not an issue, new keyboards designed for speed typing have been invented. The best-known is called a Dvorak keyboard. Despite their more rational designs, these new keyboards have not received wide acceptance.

QWERTY history and links to educational typing software
From the Superkids Educational Software Review site, this page provides a brief history of the QWERTY keyboard, and a link to learn-to-type software reviews.

Why QWERTY was invented
Provides the history of the QWERTY keyboard, as well as information on various keyboard arrangements, and links to related typewriter links.