Qwerty keyboard
The Qwerty keyboard, a well-known computer feature, dates back to the 1870s. They originally appeared as part of a typewriter and did not get much press coverage as an integral part of a machine. It took until about 1950 before journalists started using the word qwerty mainly to distinguish between an English keyboard and the azerty ones for the French/Spanish market.
My search turned up a single occurrence back in 1920. The Central Somerset Gazette published a mystery novel over a series of weeks. At one point, a piece of encrypted text entered the plot.
Although the author did not use qwerty as a word, they displayed a keyboard layout to demonstrate a cypher, where letters get swapped with the row above.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 0 9
Q W E R T Y U I O P
A S D F G H J K L
Z X C V B N M & .
A familiar layout, but with the 0 and 9 swapped. A search for typewriters, in general gave more promising results, but we shall get back to that another day.
Note that as this was an authored piece, copyright restrictions only allow a small section for the purposes of review.
