Slashdot Mirror
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.
In those days, 'audiovisual feedback' actually meant something. Long rolls of dead tree recording every single charxxxacaaxxxx ^h^h\H^H^H/d/d ^C^C^Q^Deof.DAMN...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
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.
I loved mine and I am still looking for one of those old clickity clackity huge heavy monsters with their wonderous tactile feedback feel.
Anyone else in the same boat?
At least I still have my Logitech 3 button mouse.
What is your favorite keyboard type?
ACK
No new information in a history of something? How surprising!
Ah yes, the keyboards of old could be thrown from a 747 into the middle of the Pacifac, and when they washed ashore, they would still function... but they didn't have an E-mail button. After all, what good is a keyboard without an E-mail button?
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Karma: NaN
You can have my IBM Model M when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
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. Now we've got these newfangled Wireless Ergonomic E-Mail button membrane keyboards. To heck with them, I say!
This article really entails two things: The history of the Universal or QWERTY keyboard layout and a comparison between BS and Membrane technology used today in keyboards, one of the most used interfaces to the computer at present.
QWERTY keyboards are known as Universal keyboards - they are the standard by which keyboard manufacturers produce their keyboards today. It was named this due to the q,w,e,r,t,y pattern in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard. QWERTY was originally designed by Christopher Sholes to slow typing down.
Wait a second why would we be using a keyboard layout made to slow us down? Let's look back before keyboards - typewriting. In 1868 Christopher Latham Sholes was awarded the operative patent for the typewriter. After receiving this patent, Sholes still had many 'bugs' to work out, and spent a good deal of time with the machine, working out the kinks. One of the kinks in the machine was key jamming, which was prone to happen often and could hurt the machine. If a typist typed two letters one after the other too quickly, the hammers would hit each other; the typist then had to dislodge the hammers and that could get a bit messy. So, Sholes came up with a keyboard layout that would place letters which would be most likely struck closely in succession on opposite sides of the layout.
Eventually, due to the ability to touch type with QWERTY efficiently [first demonstrated when in a typing contest a QWERTY typist managed to type quicker than someone on a stenograph-styled machine] it became the standard.
In 1936, August Dvorak patented his Simplified Keyboard - DSK. It was designed to balance the load of typing more evenly - those letters, which would be stricken most, would be under the strongest fingers. The credibility of the claims that the Dvorak is faster is outside the scope of this article. If one is truly interested, I recommend reading an informative article at: http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html. However I do believe that Dvorak perhaps is the better layout - although due to my experience with QWERTY I still stick with it. For those of you who think Dvorak is a legacy item no longer used, you will all be pleased to know that all windows versions greater than 3.11 are Dvorak compliant, and a simple setting can change the layout setting.
On to the Keyboards!
To this day I still use the IBM Model M keyboard. This keyboard was released with the original IBM PS/2 computer. It is known for it's weight, feedback, and distinctive keystroke sound. There are some Model M's which are branded by Lexmark on the back - Lexmark bought the design from IBM in the late 1980s.
Model M's are 101 key keyboards, and still comply with all ps/2 requirements [read on for Pentium 4 possible incompatibilities and fixes.] What makes this keyboard so special?
The first aspect that is most obvious upon actually typing is the sound and feel of the keyboard. There is a noticeable and quite prominent 'click' which is not as high pitched as some Chiconey keyboards (which are quite nice too,) the sound is not soft and mushy. The Model M's keys also have a bit of resistance to them - not so that it's hard to push them down, but just a tad bit more pressure is needed to fully depress a key. Now, for those of you up late at night, or up in the wee hours of the morning, perhaps this is a disadvantage for you. Also, many people prefer not to hear the keystroke - companies like Dell, IBM, and hundreds of others have manufactured (or sub-contracted other companies) to make quiet keyboards. Let's take a look at why these keyboards are quiet, and w
Why do I h8 apple?
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.
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).
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.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
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.
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!
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.
www.brownsauce.org
What a coincidence -- I actually had to take my work KB (a new IBM mush-model similar to the one in the article) apart to fix it Monday because the 'p' key was getting less and less reliable, and my typing was steadily getting worse.
When I popped the 'p' key off and looked underneath, the rubber contact mat was off center, like it had been stretched underneath so the contact didn't line up under the key. I pulled a few screws, blew out the dust and the rubber spring mat that lies on the contacts was misaligned by, like, 1/4 inch in areas. I pulled it off and tried to re-align it properly when I realized that the plastic/mylar/whatever contact sheet on the bottom wasn't flat either - like a rug that wasn't quite cut the correct shape for a room, there was a hump in it. I loosened the screws around the contacts to the PCB and I was able to then flatten the contact sheet and retighten, then realign the rubber springmat and reassemble.
Voila! Perfect. I want to point out three things.
1) It's still not a model M. If you find an old one GET IT, even if it's missing a few keys. Your neighbors' neighbors will hate all the clicking, but your fingers will be very, very happy. I personally have one of these as well as an original Northgate Omnikey Ultra purchased by me from Northgate Inc. in 1990 which was in use until March of this year. I replaced it because I bought a new PC and wanted a wireless KB. Every collector's shelf should have a Northgate on it, too.
2) This new IBM has way more contacts inside than keys. I realize this is so they can produce one electronic assembly to support 15 languages, but I wonder what the other contacts would do if I hit them. Maybe I'll get bored later today.
3) IBM's subassembly quality control has really hit the can. I realize this is a $5 keyboard, which by its design expects a certain number of defects, but if you could see how badly aligned the springmat was in this thing... SHEESH!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I've got one of the keyboards mentioned in the article--specifically, the 101-key Customizer, from www.pckeyboard.com. It weighs about five pounds, and feels like it could be used to bash in an intruder's head if necessary. Plus, it doesn't have Windows keys, which is a boon when I'm gaming--no more accidentally dumping me out to the desktop during heated Battlefield 1942 matches!
It's buckling-spring and loud as hell, though it doesn't sound quite the same as a Model M. Still key response is crisp and exactly matches what I want out of a keyboard. It is easily the best computer-related purchase I have ever made. After all, what part of your computer do you physically interact with every time you sit down?
A year ago, I got myself a Kinesis Contoured keyboard. It took me two weeks and a couple of hours of TuxTyping to get used to it, but since then it's great. I've never had any real RSI, but the Kinesis makes you sit more comfortable. You sit with straight arms; horizontally as well as in a straight angle.
It's quite expensive, though. :-/
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
"Today's websites aren't what they used to be, no sir! Back in my day, we had our caching technology; our wesites had redundency which allowed 'em to be slashdotted and still work - barely dented. Yes those were the days."
[Please type your sig here.]
To each his own. I prefer the buckling spring keys so much that using a "mushier" keyboard is almost distracting. Also, one benefit of the buckling spring keyboard is that the little click corresponds exactly to a keypress. If you heard/felt the click, the computer got the data; if you didn't, it didn't. With rubber dome keyboards, on the other hand, you have to keep an eye on your text at all times. Between the uncertainty and the overall mushy feel, rubber dome keyboards have at least two strikes against them in my book.
Although he doesn't mention it, but how much did they cost back then? Adjusting for inflation, they probably cost more than new ones cost today. One thing it interesting to note that most of the functionality hasn't changed. Sure newer keyboards are wireless and have additional buttons, but older ones work just as well.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Don't get me wrong - I code for a living, so I can certainly appreciate the value of the keyboard as a user interface peripheral. A good friend of mine who had RSI in his wrists really bad switched to using Dragon speech recognition software exclusively. Listening to him attempt to code (in Perl) was pretty funny, e.g. saying "twiddle" for "~" and such.
Mod me down for being off topic, but I cannot resist mentioning the Star Trek (#4 - with the whales) movie where Scottie attempts to use the computer from the past by talking to it.
It just goes to show how far off we are in terms of a truely intuitive user interface.
You obviously never had to type on a grid keyboard. If you're built like the average human, when the fingers of both hands on the keyboard, the arms are at an angel (45 to 60 degree) relative to the keyboard.
Staggering the keys allows you to reach the keys on the other rows by simply extending or moving back the finger. No rotation is necessary for most letters. With perfect grid layouts, the finger movement is far more complex and the chance of hitting the correct is greatly reduced.
So called ergonomic keyboards try to solve the problem by splitting the keyboard and rotating the halves.
Except for very crude typing requirements, nobody in his right mind uses a grid layout.
They have it in black now, too. Unfortunately, they still don't have a USB version.
Here's my antique keyboard it punches morse code tapes.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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)
Reserved Word.
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!
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty