Because, when typewriters came out, each key was attached to a lever that struck the paper. Putting the letters in alphabetical order caused the levers to overlap and locked them quite often.
Christopher Sholes solved this in 1860 when he developed the keyboard you use now– the so-called “qwerty” keyboard (look at the top row)–which made everything function smoothly. He basically tried to “spread out’ the letters that were used most frequently, so that the chance of the bars crossing was far reduced.
We stuck with it to retain the flexibility of using computers or typewriters in the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s.
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