<P> QWERTY is a keyboard design for Latin - script alphabets . The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard (Q W E R T Y). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in 1873 . It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in widespread use . </P> <P> The QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin . In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé . </P>

Most keyboard use an arrangement of keys known as