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.

Comments

Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I will probably get totally flamed for this but I think the best keyboards I have owned have all been made by Microsoft. Right now I am using the Office Keyboard and I love it. The action is great and the extra keys actually serve my purpose (I work in Excel and Word all day).

Re:Who else misses the old IBM keyboards?

[Havokmon]

I loved mine and I am still looking for one of those old clickity clackity huge heavy monsters with their wonderous tactile feedback feel.

I picked up 3 or 4 of them at GoodWill last year for $1.50 each.

changing views of computer parts

[pytheron]

it looks like good keyboards (i.e the early ones) were more components of the computer systems, whereas cheap keyboards are peripherals of said systems.

This only reflects the movement of the computing model, and the seperation of what is regarded as essential to what is regarded as an accessory.

QWERTY -Slow typists down? Wrong.

[sparkhead]

From the article: QWERTY was originally designed by Christopher Sholes to slow typing down.

That's simply wrong. QWERTY was designed to speed typing up by spacing out the most used keys to different sides of the keyboard.

QWERTY was designed as he states to reduce jamming of the hammers, not to slow typists down. Even without hammers QWERTY was still faster due to the use of both hands for common letters.

Re:QWERTY -Slow typists down? Wrong.

[His name cannot be s]

Very True.

As a matter of fact, many studies show that QWERTY, while not the *MOST* optimal, is many times more optimal than either randomly ordered keys, or linear ordering.

Given that the punctuatuion characters are gravitated outwards, and that the Z,X and Q characters are placed on the non-dominant hand, on the edges, seems to corroborate that. If indeed you wanted to slow someone down, drop those into the middle of the keyboard!

Now, for left-handers (often reffered to the more proper 'Spawn-of-the-devil' ) are probably at a disadvantage, but heck, what can you do ? :p

designed to slow typing down (NOT)

[threeturn]

I am sure I am not the only one to spot the mistake.

The QWERTY keyboard was not designed to "slow typing down", buy rather to reduce the number of jams in a much more elegant way. It avoids having frequent adjacent letter pairs activating levers that are close to each other on the typewriters mechanism. This means that jams (which occur between adjacent levers) occur less frequently when typing FAST!

Todays keyboards aren't what they used to be

[32bitwonder]

My favourite keyboards were the one for the PCjr (not the chicklet one) and the one for the Atari PC1. They both had a very light, non-rubbery feel to them.

I've just spent an exhaustive search for a replacement desktop keyboard and was absolutely dismayed by the garbage keyboards out there. What I really wanted was one that had key switches similar to my old IBM T23 laptop, the best keyboard ever IMHO. I eventually found one, and it is close, but not quite as good as the IBM.

For those interested, you can see it at Precision Squared. Look for the PSK-5000 model. For touch typists, I highly recommend this keyboard. Mac users can find its equivalent with the MacAlly IceKey which appears to be a re-branded PSK-5000.

Morse code keyboard

[ch-chuck]

Here's my antique keyboard it punches morse code tapes.

I agree completely.

[HFXPro]

I used to have problems with my hands hurting after coding all night (for my own fun) with keyboards of the normal type including the IBM model M (I have 3 anyone want one). My outfingers joints would ache, and my hands hurt from twisting my hand into contortions attempting to press all of the special keys which get used quite often while programming.

I went through several keyboards looking for one which would make it less painful to do something which I really enjoyed. I never wanted to admit to buying anything of an ergonimic keyboard especially one from Microsoft. However, after working on a friends all night, I didn't notice the pain from using it. I ended up ordering a simple Microsoft Elite with the parts for a new computer.

Since using the this keyboard I find my fingers have rarely hurt unless I'm typing really fast for extended periods of time. Other benefits of this keyboard is that it is reasonably quiet (I don't wake up the house with my typing now) and it feels really good. I don't plan on getting another keyboard anytime soon. The only company that I can say comes close to Microsofts keyboards and mice (I've tried several also) is Logitech (whose mice I usually prefer)

Q: where do I find a true programmable keyboard???

[orim]

Hey folks,

since we're talking about keyboards. I am surprised nobody mentioned programmable keyboards yet. Does anyone use/can recommend any good programmable keyboards these days?

The one I've used is Gateway's model... I think it's called AnyKey kb. Had four extra buttons in the top right, Program Macro(sticking a series of keystrokes into one key press), Remap(remapping a single key), and an extra column of function keys on the left hand side.

In any case, in my programming duties, I often find myself needing to do things like reformat 50 lines in an identical fashion. Like take out first four chars on a line, indent, put AAA there, go to next line.
So with this kb, you didn't have to use software, you just record a macro, use it 50 times, and you're done! Life saver for the fingers/wrists/carpal tunnel.

Any info appreciated!