In the 1840s, the typewriter looked like a piano with A->N on black keys and Z<-O on white keys.
Multiple variations came in till the early 1870s when Christopher Sholes invented something similar to what we use today.
It was not exactly the same, e.g., it had “.” where we have R today.
Remington, which sold weapons and sewing machines then, bought the design from Sholes.
Remington made minor modifications and, in 1878, brought it even closer to what it looks like today.
However, M was next to L in the 2nd row and X|C of today were C|X.
Some stories suggest that QWERTY was designed to prevent the jamming of mechanical typewriters by separating commonly used letter combinations.
But plenty of other combinations could also do that.
And many options existed with Remington’s QWERTY at that time.
The fact that Christopher Sholes, the inventor, himself invented another typewriter (XPMCH) in 1889 shows that QWERTY wasn’t the perfect design.
But Remington was too big by that time, and most of the typewriters in the market were Remington’s.
Typewriting, in those days, had to be learnt in classes, and if you took a class, you took it for the most common typewriter because you knew that the prospective employer, most likely, would have a Remington typewriter.
Then it caught on, and people transitioned from typewriters to keyboards which continued to be QWERTY.
