Why isn’t the keyboard just in alphabetical order? Or some other order that makes sense?

Hunt… and peck. Hunt… and peck. No, it’s not the first robin of spring out looking for worms. It’s what most of us do when we have to type. Whether it’s a devar Torah, a project for school, or an invitation to a special event, hardly anyone can get by without typing. And unless you put in a lot of time learning, you’re probably like most people — hunting for the keys you need.

Why isn’t the keyboard just in alphabetical order? Or some other order that makes sense? Why put common letters like E and A around the edges and less-common letters like K right in the center?

You might have heard rumors that old typewriters used to get jammed, so they scrambled the letters on purpose to slow people down. But that’s not the whole story….

From Handwriting to Print

Up until the 1800s, if you needed something written, you did it by hand. That’s how the Rambam wrote the Mishneh Torah in the 1100s, and for most of history, there was no other way. But that changed in the 1400s when Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press.

The printing press used movable type. That meant you could arrange individual letters to create whole pages. Before that, if you wanted to print a page many times, you had to carve out all the letters (in reverse) from wood. It’s easy to see why it was usually easier to copy the pages out by hand!

Movable type made it fast and easy to arrange letters into sturdy metal blocks of text that could be used over and over, making it possible to print hundreds, or even thousands, of books, posters, and newspapers.

It’s hard to imagine how incredible this was. Before this, most homes didn’t have a siddur or Chumash. The first Hebrew book ever printed, in 1483, was an edition of Maseches Berachos, and many printed seforim followed soon after, including a Shulchan Aruch published in 1574 during Rav Yosef Karo’s lifetime. Soon after came printed editions with the Rema’s commentary, suddenly making learning far more accessible.

But still, for people writing books, articles, or letters, the only way to do it was to write them by hand.