Two interesting examples of Historical Accidents from the book:

The keyboard design on most typewriters is a case in point. In the late 1800s, there was no standard pattern for the arrangement of letters on the typewriter keyboard. Then in 1873 Christopher Scholes helped design a“new improved” layout. The layout became known as QWERTY, after the letter arrangement of the six letters in the top left row. QWERTY was chosen to maximize the distance between the most frequently used letters. This was a good solution in its day; it deliberately slowed down the typist, and reduced the jamming of keys on manual typewriters. By 1904, the Remington Sewing Machine Company of New York was mass-producing typewriters with this layout, and it became the de facto industry standard. But with today’s electric typewriters and word processors, this jamming problem is now completely irrelevant. Engineers have developed new keyboard layouts, such as DSK (Dvorak’s Simplified Keyboard), which reduce the distance typists’ fingers travel by over fifty percent. The same material can be typed in 5–10 percent less time using DSK than QWERTY.1 But QWERTY is the established system. Almost all typewriters use it, so we all learn it and are reluctant to learn a second keyboard. Typewriter and keyboard manufacturers continue, therefore, with QWERTY. The vicious circle is complete.

If history had worked differently, and if the DSK standard had been adopted from the outset, that would have been better for today’s technology. However, given where we are, the question of whether or not we should switch standards involves a further consideration. There is a lot of inertia, in the form of machines, keyboards, and trained typists, behind QWERTY. Is it worthwhile to retool?

The QWERTY problem is but one minor example of a more widespread problem. Our preference for gasoline engines over steam and light-water nuclear reactors over gas-cooled is better explained by historical accidents than by the superiority of the adopted technologies. Brian Arthur, an economist at Stanford and one of the developers of the mathematical tools used to study bandwagon effects, tells the story of how we ended up with gasoline-powered cars.4

In 1890 there were three ways to power automobiles—steam, gasoline, and electricity—and of these one was patently inferior to the other two: gasoline…. [A turning point for gasoline was] an 1895 horseless carriage competition sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald. This was won by a gasoline-powered Duryea—one of only two cars to finish out of six starters —and has been cited as the possible inspiration for R. E. Olds to patent in 1896 a gasoline power source, which he subsequently mass-produced in the “Curved-Dash Olds.” Gasoline thus overcame its slow start. Steam continued viable as an automotive power source until 1914, when there was an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease in North America. This led to the withdrawal of horse troughs—which is where steam cars could fill with water. It took the Stanley brothers about three years to develop a condenser and boiler system that did not need to be filled every thirty or forty miles. But by then it was too late. The steam engine never recovered. 

While there is little doubt that today’s gasoline technology is better than steam, that’s not the right comparison. How good would steam have been if it had had the benefit of seventy-five years of research and development? While we may never know, some engineers believe that steam was the better bet.5