QWERTY-the immortal keyboard

The chances are that you are a QWERTY keyboard user. If you use a computer, if you access the Internet, if you check for a book on the computerised database of your local library, you will probably use the standard keyboard. It is likely you will be confronted with an alphanumeric keyboard with a somewhat bizarre arrangement of letters that has been nicknamed QWERTY (after the first six characters on the top row of letters). The QWERTY keyboard is 130 years old, and must be one of the few Victorian inventions to have survived almost unchanged (but not unchallenged) into the electronic era in which we now live. Given the dominance and ubiquity of QWERTY in the world of advanced technologies, it is interesting to consider the reasons for this and the future of this keyboard as we enter the new millennium.