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>The QWERTY design predated any potential jamming problems. Perhaps it was so foreseeing?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-...

Apparently it was partly publicity stunt, partly defined through feedback received from actual users.

> This theory [jam avoidance] could be easily debunked for the simple reason that “er” is the fourth most common letter pairing in the English language

Argh, no. E and R are separated by D, 4, and C. It would be nice if someone writing about typewriters actually looked at one.

The bar-adjacent letter pairs, from most to least frequent¹, are MI BY CR NU HN XE HM AZ DC GB ZW VT FV SX.

¹ https://gist.github.com/lydell/c439049abac2c9226e53

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