Actually, QWERTY was designed to speed typists up, not slow them down. The idea was that the developer of the QWERTY keyboard (I forget his name right now) placed the keys in that order in order to prevent the striking levers from locking together. (If you have an old manual typewriter lying around, you can duplicate this locking.) Before he developed the QWERTY keyboard, typists had to type slowly in order to keep keys from locking together. But by rearranging the keys, he kept the common diads from being placed close together in the striking levers. Since the typists then didn't have to worry about the levers sticking together anymore, they were free to type as fast as they wanted with fewer repercussions.

Oh -- and if you can show me a good study that shows that any particular keyboard is faster than QWERTY, I'd like to see it. (Not to imply that QWERTY is better, but, rather, that none is better than another, at least for just the letters.)

(I know I rambled a little bit there, but I haven't had as much sleep as I'd like.)