I read in “The Art of Looking Sideways” by Alan Fletcher that the standard typewriter keyboard is in it’s present state because of a sales technique. The typewriter salesperson could demonstrate how “easy” the new equipment was to use by typing “TYPEWRITER” without ever having to move their hands/fingers from the original position. Because all of the keys needed to spell typewriter are indeed in this top row, I can’t help but believe it. Any comments?
Link to column: QWERTY – CKDH
The top row isn’t the “original position”. Fingers are placed on ASDF and JKL;
Yes. Of course. My mistake. Still, no complicated finger stretching would be involved in typing TYPEWRITER. It seems feasible that the truth could include both the sales idea and the manual typewriter isse.
The common explanation, which I believe, is that the keyboard arrangement is meant to slow down typists, because if, on the original mechanical typewriters, keys were struck in too swift a succession, they would jam. So, the keys were arranged in a deliberately awkward fashion, so as to slow down the typist and avoid jamming the keys.
Anybody who learned to type on an old Remington should be able to corroborate this.
Was the QWERTY keyboard purposely designed to slow typists?This answers that question, and is the link to the article being referenced in the OP. Or to use fancy terms from another thread, this thread is in re that article. 
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, Samanantics, glad to have you with us.
When you start a thread, it’s helpful to provide a link to the column that you are commenting on. Yeah, it’s on the front page today, but in a week, it will have disappeared into the massive Archives. So, providing the link helps save people the time to go searching, and also tries to keep us all on the same page. For instance, if you had provided a link, wyforjay wouldn’t have needed to post his comments, which are well covered in the Column. [insert wicked grin]
I have to say that Fletcher’s story sounds ridiculous to me, aside from being inconsistent with Cecil. Why on earth would a potential buyer care whether “TYPEWRITER” could be spelled without moving fingers off a line? If that were the case, why not have the letters just be T-Y-P-E-W-R-I-T-E-R on the top line? In short, that story sounds phony.
And welcome to the Straight Dope, wyforjay, we appreciate the comment. Generally, of course, threads in this forum refer to one of Cecil’s columns, and we save some redundancy if members read the column before posting. No biggie, you’ll know for future.