Im tired and cannot sleep until this is out of my mind so, have a half-remembered keyboard history lesson that is true to the worst of my abilities. (I just had to know why keyboards are like *that* and I'm here to make it everyone else's problem)
also don't @ me I'm terrible with names so I just,, didn't, okay
Did you know that the original patent for the standardised keyboard was claimed(started?) in 1867. Over a period of 5 years, they developed and refined the order (and mechanisms) of the keyboard until, with the help of telegraphers and typists, they came closer to the standard we have now. Once the patent was finalised and sold, there were changes still! Over the next few years, (I wanna say like 5-8?) after the patent bought, a few differences still remained comparer to our current model (this is still in use for typewriters remember!). For example; numbers 1 and 0 were still omitted from the keyboard, as other keys could be used to replace them on typewriters, the lack of punctuation symbols (and their locations of the ones that remained) and switching of a few more keys ('c' & 'x', the fullstop was where 'r' currently is today on QWERTY boards) and missing function keys like 'shift' (duhh).
Fun fact: lower case 'L' or uppercase 'i' would be used as a 1
Fun fact: other methods to create different symbols not present in the keyboard, were created by printing over the previous symbol. This was initially carried out by typing one part of the symbol, backspacing, and then the second part of the symbol (for e.g. ':' '<-' ',' = ';').
Though, the way in which this was carried our had to be improved. As typewriters work largely in one direction, backspacing to make it go the other direction, would be a slow and time consuming task (imagine being in the mojo and your thought processes having to be forcibly halted by the lack of functionalities). Instead, a workaround was devised! By holding the 'spacebar' down, pressing the keys you need in order to create a symbol, then releasing it, would allow the printer to stay in one position till the spacebar was released!
That's all, folks. I'm somewhat drained, and truth be told, that's about as much interest I had at the time before I moved on to greener pastures (like how the fuck does humanism crop up in societies strict on theism (it was not greener pastures and I am in dread))