qwerty keyboard is my favorite example. Designed to solve the key sticking problem when typing too fast but now we're all stuck with a layout designed to be inefficient.
For all the hype I hear about dvorak and other alternate keyboard layouts, I've never met anyone who could type significantly faster on it than I could on qwerty. This isn't objective in any way but from experience I can't say its any 'better'. As for ergonomics and other peripheral effects, I can't comment as I haven't looked into them.
Well objectively it's less finger travel and more home row use, so it has its merits. The issue is that qwerty is such a de facto standard that you'll run into many layout issues using dvorak.
I agree. I have a bit faster typing speed right now with dvorak. not sure if it is really super-better, but I definitely benefited from http://www.typingstudy.com
https://www.addedbytes.com/blog/dvorak-vs-qwerty/