Fascinating keyboards

Written by Alvy, on Microsiervos, October 5th 2010.
Translated by Jacqueline Novoa Rodriguez. See the original article in Spanish
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Some interesting photos of keyboards that I found while exploring Flickr in search of appropriate images on the topic:

This is a linotype* keyboard which is how books were originally made with the keys in the ETAOIN SHRLDU configuration which corresponds to the frequency of the letters in English from top to bottom: E is the most common letter, then T, then A, etc.

This is a teletype/telex* keyboard from 1960, with its ‘at’, the curious “Who are you?” key and another for producing a bell like sound.

A special keyboard from a public terminal – its metallic antivandalism robustness is considerable – whose design seems somewhat disastrous although it includes some humourous keys with HAPPY and SAD emoticons as well as others such as HTTP://, .COM, .NET etc.

Another keyboard from some sort of old programmable computer or something similar with a key layout which appears to make no sense whatsoever.

The difference between the Apple Lisa* keyboard (1983) and the current ultrafine Apple keyboard. Interestingly apart from the central panel and the row of function keys the rest has not changed much in position or size over time.

A classic: the Atari 400* keyboard, which dates back to 1979 and was one of those “membrane” types just like many arcade machines, uncomfortable and with a tendency to break down.

Another classic and one of my favourites of course, because I spent many hours with it: the Commodore 64* keyboard(1982). Instead of four arrow keys for the cursor it only had two and had to use capitals in order to move it; it had a separate @ key which was barely used in those days; another for π (combined with the up arrow which wasn’t used much either). The sides of the keys also included block graphics to create drawings.

Another for the strange keyboard collection: from Marcin Wicary’s collection this Sharp MZ-80K*, a gismo from 1978 which worked with the Z80 and had a non-standard keyboard. Among all the extra graphics and strange symbols there appears to be one for eye and another for nose (!) (bottom row).

An interesting way of putting the alternative Dvorak* key layout into practice although on today’s low profile keyboards it would be difficult to use this trick. Dvorak is optimized to type with both hands and theoretically it is better than the QWERTY layout. It never became very popular.

The keyboard of a Spectrum* clone called Olympian-S, interestingly from 1995, more than a decade after the Spectrum’s popularity in the 80s made it one of the first “family computers”.

Editor’s note:
Photos (under a Creative Commons license) of the impressive Marcin Wichary collection and also from Mark Eichin, Paul Downey, Niels Heidenreich, Blake Patterson, Axel Tregoning and Julián Rodríguez
The links marked with a * are in English.