Bernard: For which language, and thus which frequency distribution of letters and letter sequences, was the standard typewriter keyboard designed  Cora: To ask this question, you must be making a mistaken assumption: that typing speed was to be maximized  The real danger with early typewriters was that operators would hit successive keys too quickly, thereby crashing typebars into each other, bending connecting wires, and so on  So the idea was to slow the operator down by making the most common letter sequences awkward to type  Bernard: This is surely not right
These technological limitations have long since vanished, yet the keyboard is still as it was then
Typewriters and word-processing equipment are typically sold to people who have learned to use the standard keyboard and who, ttherefore, demand it in equipment they buy.