Free Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould Page B

these overt rules (like natural selection) to alien domains (like technological change), but in seeking the more general rules of structure and change themselves.
     
    The Origin of QWERTY: True randomness has limited power to intrude itself into the forms of organisms. Small and unimportant changes, unrelated to the working integrity of a complex creature, may drift in and out of populations by a process akin to throwing dice. But intricate structures, involving the coordination of many separate parts, must arise for an active reason—since the bounds of mathematical probability for fortuitous association are soon exceeded as the number of working parts grows.
    But if complex structures must arise for a reason, history may soon overtake the original purpose—and what was once a sensible solution becomes an oddity or imperfection in the altered context of a new future. Thus, the panda’s true thumb permanently lost its ability to manipulate objects when carnivorous ancestors found a better use for this digit in the limited motions appropriate for creatures that run and claw. This altered thumb then becomes a constraint imposed by past history upon the panda’s ability to adapt in an optimal way to its new context of herbivory. The panda’s thumb, in short, becomes an emblem of its different past, a sign of history.
    Similarly, QWERTY had an eminently sensible rationale in the early technology of typewriting but soon became a constraint upon faster typing as advances in construction erased the reason for QWERTY’s origin. The key (pardon the pun) to QWERTY’s origin lies in another historical vestige easily visible on the second row of letters. Note the sequence: DFGHJKL—a good stretch of the alphabet in order, with the vowels E and I removed. The original concept must have simply arrayed the letters in alphabetical order. Why were the two most common letters of this sequence removed from the most accessible home row? And why were other letters dispersed to odd positions?
    Those who remember the foibles of manual typewriters (or, if as hidebound as yours truly, still use them) know that excessive speed or unevenness of stroke may cause two or more keys to jam near the striking point. You also know that if you don’t reach in and pull the keys apart, any subsequent stroke will type a repetition of the key leading the jam—as any key subsequently struck will hit the back of the jammed keys and drive them closer to the striking point.
    These problems were magnified in the crude technology of early machines—and too much speed became a hazard rather than a blessing, as key jams canceled the benefits of celerity. Thus, in the great human traditions of tinkering and pragmatism, keys were moved around to find a proper balance between speed and jamming. In other words—and here comes the epitome of the tale in a phrase—QWERTY arose in order to slow down the maximal speed of typing and prevent jamming of keys. Common letters were either allotted to weak fingers or dispersed to positions requiring a long stretch from the home row.
    This basic story has gotten around, thanks to short takes in Time and other popular magazines, but the details are enlightening, and few people have the story straight. I have asked nine typists who knew this outline of QWERTY’s origin and all (plus me for an even ten) had the same misconception. The old machines that imposed QWERTY were, we thought, of modern design—with keys in front typing a visible line on paper rolled around a platen. This leads to a minor puzzle: Key jams may be a pain in the butt, but you see them right away and can easily reach in and pull them apart. So why QWERTY?
    As David points out, the prototype of QWERTY, a machine invented by C. L. Sholes in the 1860s, was quite different in form from modern typewriters. It had a flat paper carriage and did not roll paper right around the platen. Keys struck the paper invisibly from beneath, not patently from the front as in