With reference to Cecil’s column Was the QWERTY keyboard purposely designed to slow typists? .
I recently saw another theory on this site.
“In 1873, E. Remington & Sons licensed the design from Scholes, and set their engineers to work to on the design. One of their keyboard layout changes was driven by a clever marketing idea. The Remington brand name, TYPE WRITER, could be most speedily typed if all of its letters were on the same row. Remington’s salesmen used this slight bit of subterfuge to impress potential customers.”