On a typical keyboard, why is the 0 in the number row next to the 9 instead of the 1?
This seems like a question which should have a straight-forward answer, but the only one I could find is this yahoo question which has two instances of entirely unsourced speculation as answers. (0 as 10, and because 0 is rarely at the start of a number)
To complicate things, the wikipedia article adds that
0 and 1 were omitted to simplify the design and reduce the manufacturing and maintenance costs; they were chosen specifically because they were "redundant" and could be recreated using other keys. Typists who learned on these machines learned the habit of using the uppercase letter I (or lowercase letter L) for the digit one, and the uppercase O for the zero.
One might speculate that the 0 is placed where it is because of it's proximity to the O, but since the 1 was added down at the other end (nowhere near the I), it would have made just as much sense to put 0 down there too.
Almost every keyboard layout I've seen listed on wikipedia is this way, even the ones which don't use latin script at all. Only the Hungarian one (thanks, Gildas) puts 0 before the 1. This may be due to inheriting from latin-alphabet keyboards, though.
Anyone have an explanation for this oddity? Or specific sources backing up the yahoo theories?
Edit: Based on everyone's answers, I've done more research and come up with what I think is the logical explanation. I don't have specific sources to cite, though, so I'm still open to an "official" answer, if anyone has one.
Answer
Via further research, I've discovered that I was acting under a bad assumption. I had assumed that 0 and 1 became standard around the same time, but the very next section in the wikipedia article says:
The 0 key was added and standardized in its modern position early in the history of the typewriter, but the 1 and exclamation point were left off some typewriter keyboards into the 1970s.
It appears to be the IBM Selectric which really popularized the 1 in the '70s,
Given this 60+ year discrepancy between each key's appearance, I think I can come to a logical conclusion:
The 0 was placed next to the 9 either because of the proximity to the O (it would be easy for people already used to typing an O to type a 0 instead) or because it could be seen as 8-9-10 (and 0-2-3 doesn't make sense). Later, when the 1 was introduced, the only logical place for it was next to the 2, since it would make no sense to have 8-9-0-1 at the end of the row. And by that time, the 0 was fully established, so it couldn't be moved next to the new 1.
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