*Hint: You can use the letters more than once
Great icebreaker from Kathy Valdes at Verse One at a seminar today.
Wanting to know what came first - the chicken or the egg so to speak - I looked into it a bit further.
Christopher Scholes laid out the keyboard in that now familiar QWERTY design so common two letter combinations were on opposite sides. This simply to prevent his mechanical keyboard jamming.
Scholes with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W Soule invented a writing machine in the early 1870s - the original layout was not the QWERTY pattern we see today. This became popular in the Remington No. 2 of 1878.
As the manufacturing rights for the Scholes and Glidden Type-Writer were sold to E Remington and Sons in 1873 and there were a few rearrangements of the keyboard subsequently it would seem that this is just a coincidence.
Unless as I prefer to think the designers prioritised this clever trick and excellent pub quiz fact for future generations above mechanics and usability. Maybe this is something we've all been guilty of as designers at some point?
Answer: Typewriter
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