Take a look at the following configuration of letters and see if they are familiar to you:

Q W E R T Y U I O P

You have undoubtably seen this many times (look at the top row of letters on your keyboard). It is known as the QWERTY configuration, and it has a fascinating history. Back in the 1870s, Sholes & Co., the leading manufacturer of typewriters at the time, received many complaints from users about the typewriter keys sticking together if the operator went too fast. In response, top management asked its engineers to figure out a way to prevent this from happening. The engineers discussed the problem for a while until one of them said, "...How can we slow the operator down?"

One answer was to have a fairly inefficient keyboard configuration. For example, the letters "o" and "i" are the third and sixth most frequently used letters in the English alphabet, and yet the engineers positioned them on the keyboard so that relatively weaker ring and little fingers had to depress them. This logic pervaded the keyboard, and this brilliant idea solved the problem.

Since that solution, the state of the art in typewriter and word processing technology has advanced significantly. There are now typewriters that can go much faster than any human can type. The problem is that the QWERTY configuration continues to be used even though there are faster configurations available. Once a rule gets in place, it's very difficult to eliminate it even though the original reason for its generation has gone away.

From:
Roger Von Oech, Ph.D.
"A Whack on the Side of Head"
Creative Think