Recently this newspaper ran an article about Microsoft unveiling “its first new keyboard redesign in three decades.” The change, the piece said, was the addition of an AI chatbot-enabling “Copilot key” to the keyboards of some personal computers that run the company’s Windows 11 operating system. The key for Copilot, which was formerly known as Bing Chat and features a ribbon-like logo, will be located near the space bar and replace the right CTRL key on some keyboards, according to the article.

As you probably expect by now, this started me thinking about the layouts of computer keyboards and of the typewriter keys that preceded them. So let’s jump right in and start by examining the forerunner of today’s plastic keyboard, the good old QWERTY typewriter layout.

Who’d have thought the history of the ubiquitous QWERTY key layout would be uncertain — but it is. The most common story of its invention holds that this layout of keys was intended to slow down typists so they wouldn’t jamb up the mechanical typewriter of the day. It was the brainchild of Kenosha, Wisconsin, editor and printer Christopher Latham Sholes, who patented his idea in 1867 and sold it to E. Remington and Sons a few years later.

Another theory about QWERTY’s configuration contends that our now-familiar keyboard “was designed,” says Hackday.com, “for Morse code, with significant regard given to putting the most frequently used letters on the home row.” The letters were so arranged to make it easier for telegraph operators to transcribe the messages they’d received. “That’s why, for example,” adds Wikipedia, “the Z is next to the S and the E, because Z and SE are indistinguishable in American Morse code.”

Long before the folks at Microsoft added their latest twist to typing, a few other companies had already made some changes. Around 1980, Apple launched its Command key whose purpose is to allow the user to enter keyboard commands in applications and in the system.

IBM added its twist to the computer keyboard in 1992 when it introduced the Track Point (or Pointing Stick), that little red nub that sticks up usually among the G, H and B keys. Used for moving the pointer, the nipple, as it’s sometimes called, is an isometric device that reacts to force rather than gross movement.

Microsoft’s first tweak to the computer keyboard came in 1994 when it debuted the Windows key. Pressing this key, which is also known as the Start, Logo, Flag or OS key, brings up the computer’s start menu.

In 2020, Google changed the name of the former Search (or Launcher) key that’s located between the Tab and Shift keys on the left side of its Chromebook keyboard to the Everything Button.

There’s a British version of the QWERTY keyboard that is based on the ISO (the International Standardization Organization) layout and includes a £ key — the British pound sign for their currency — as well as a few other changes. (American keyboards are based on standards established by ANSI, the American National Standards Institute.)

Other European nations have one of two different versions of the computer keyboard, both of which are also referred to by the first six letters of their top rows. The QWERTZ keyboard (also called the Swiss keyboard) is used in German-speaking countries, while the AZERTY model is used in the French-speaking countries, predominantly France and Belgium.

Back here in the good old USA we’ve managed to top those Europeans by coming up with a couple of totally new keyboard designs – one new one and one that’s not so new.

The more recently developed (2013) KALQ keyboard is a split-screen affair whose layout is designed for typing with the thumbs on tablets and phablets (smartphones with at least a 5-inch screen). By placing 15 letters on its left side and 11 on the right, the keyboard is designed to speed up thumb typing by as much as 34 percent. The layout’s KALQ name is derived from the bottom row of letters on its right-hand side.

Not so new is the Dvorak keyboard. Patented by Dr. August Dvorak and William L. Dealey in 1936, it was designed with user comfort and productivity in mind by placing the most-used consonants on the right side of its home row and the vowels on its left. It never caught on.

I’ll stop here because all this qwerty querying is making me queasy.

Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.

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