"Frequently-used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document."
Beyond this, there's an awful lot of debate over QWERTY vs. alternatives (particularly Dvorak), which I shan't get into here.
isn't the premiere choice for entering data.
It damn well is for me. I touch-type, and any slight edge I might gain from Dvorak is easily outweighed by (a) QWERTY's ubiquity and - more importantly - (b) the inherent slowdown incurred by thinking and typing simultaneously. And don't bother suggesting voice recognition; my voice would get tired a lot more quickly than my fingers do. (For businessmen who spend lots of time producing correspondence, voice recognition would make a lot more sense.)
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