Viper's Lair has posted a BS and membrane keyboard technology article

Wait a second… why would we be using a keyboard layout made to slow us down? Let's look back before keyboards - typewriting. In 1868 Christopher Latham Sholes was awarded the operative patent for the typewriter. After receiving this patent, Sholes still had many 'bugs' to work out, and spent a good deal of time with the machine, working out the kinks. One of the kinks in the machine was key jamming, which was prone to happen often and could hurt the machine. If a typist typed two letters one after the other too quickly, the hammers would hit each other; the typist then had to dislodge the hammers and that could get a bit messy. So, Sholes came up with a keyboard layout that would place letters which would be most likely struck closely in succession on opposite sides of the layout.

Read more