When the first PC was launched,why was it not alphabetical?

Question

When the first PC was launched,why was it not alphabetical?

Answer 1

The Qwerty keyboard, and I assume it is the keyboard you are talking about, was designed with typists in mind.  A good typist will use every finger and therefore the most commonly used letters are placed within easy access for the fingers, from the middle out.

Answer 2

do you mean the keyboard? that was from the typewriter, which had qwerty introduced to help prevent letter jams.

Answer 3

If you mean the keyboard,   it was a normal qwerty board  copied from typewriters.  ,,   Typists tried different boards  and for a competent  two handed typist this board and letter and control  arrangement was found to be the quickest and most practical..      

Answer 4

in regards to home computers etc. the keyboard layout is designs with keeping the main (most commonly) used letters within easy reach. Which is not in alphabetical order.

Answer 5

As people have responded above it was because of the QWERTY keyboard layout used on typewriters to slow people down and prevent early machines jamming. However, why did this make the leap to computer keyboards? My guess is that the early business PCs were used primarily as word processors by traditional secretaries. Secretaries would of course be used to the old QWERTY style keyboard. It is only when computers started to be adopted by people not trained in traditional typing skills that the keyboard layouts starts to look like an odd choice. However, people adapt and although there are potentially much better keyboard layouts I doubt now whether they will ever be adopted. We are stuck with QWERTY I'm afraid.

Answer 6

The PC keyboard was laid out in the same way as earlier typewriter keyboards because

- the people most likely to use PCs were used to that layout, and

- other electronic/electrical machines (typically teleprinters) which fit historically between typewriters and PCs had also been laid out in the same way, the first PCs using teleprinter keyboards.

The QWERTY keyboard layout has nothing to do with convenience for the typist. In any language letters tend to cluster (e.g. 'i' and 'e' frequently occur together in words, and 'q' - in English - is always followed by 'u'). The QWERTY layout minimised the risk of the mechanism jamming due to the most common combinations.    

Answer 7

the reason behind the qwerty keyboard is from the days of the typewriter. people had learned to type on typewriters so fast that it caused letter jams. so to slow people down a bit, the rest of the typewriters thereafter featured jumbled up keyboards (the qwerty configuration), and people were used to it, so computers were the same way. hope i helped.