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A Condensed History Of The Keyboard
An anonymous reader points to this overview of old (good) keyboards versus the cheap and nasty kind which begins "Today's keyboards aren't what they used to be, no sir! Back in my day, we had our BS technology; our keyboards had chassis's which allowed 'em to be thrown off a 3-story building and still work - barely dented. Yes those were the days." Not a lot of new information, but some good visuals.
Quoting the story: Key caps allow one to reconfigure their letters without actually prying off the keys from the keyboard. This was implemented due to the aforementioned QWERTY/Dvorak controversy.
I loved the ability to remove the cap keys, every few weeks I would remove all the cap keys from my keyboard and clean each one by hand using a bleach solution, inside and out. It's great for all us obsessive-compulsive cleaners.
The other great thing about them was the ability to play practical jokes, all one had to do was change around a few 'key' keys and watch all the non-touch typists in a computer lab get pissed off at the computer. And with Windows 2k, I'd change the insert and delete keys around, (makes it hard to use CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to the login screen)
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
No new information in a history of something? How surprising!
This is quickly going to turn into a lovefest for the IBM M keyboard.
I have several of them stashed away on the off chance that the one I've been using for the past 13 years breaks. Which it hasn't. Hoping to sell it on "Antiques Roadshow" in about 40 years.