• Christopher L. Sholes, a Milwaukee newspaperman, poet, and part-time inventor
• Similar to piano
• All capital letters

Our writing instruments contribute to our thoughts, (1882)

• Invented by danish pastor Rasmus Malling-Hansen (1865)
• First commercial (2k produced)
• Hand crafted manufacture
• Friedrich Nietzsche received one directly from Hansen, due to failing vision. He did not like it (damaged in shipping).

(aka Sholes & Glidden Typewriter)

• Remington had the infrastructure & mechanical skills
• Remington wanted to diversify after civil war
• 1k initial production

• First to be mass produced
• Introduced shift key:
  • The typebars (NO: stenger) each had upper and lower characters
  • Pressing shift key shifted mechanism to use capital letters
  • Wikipedia writes: “The Shift key’s name originated from the typewriter, where one had to press and hold the button to shift up the case stamp to change to capital letters”
• Mark Twain was the first author to submit a book manuscript in typed copy, having bought a typewriter for $125 in 1874.

Consider introduction of Numpad on modern computers: It is Ortholinear, since it does not hearkens back to typewrites mechanical constraints.

It has been argued that the typewritten page was an influence in the move in book designs from justified lines to even-spacing between words and the uneven right-hand margins this causes

(Above tweet refers to S U P E R M E T R O I D manual, which is formatted in mono space bricktext layout)

• Line feed means moving one line forward \n
• A carriage return means moving the cursor to the beginning of the line. The code is \r
• Line Feed: (ASCII 10, \n)
• Carriage return: (ASCII 13, \r),

Gives new line:

CRLF

Windows (e.g. Notepad), HTTP- and MIME-mail headers

LF

Unix, OSX, GNU/Linux

For more, see stackoverflow

Microsoft Ergonomics 4000 (great cheap ergonomic keyboard!) and predecessor to Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop.

• Electric, highly innovative
• Used a typeball, instead of typebar (aka ”golf ball”) which rotates \(+\) pivots at high speed (14.8 characters per second)
• Allowed changing fonts
• 75% of market, by 1986 13M sold

• Vim legacy: HJKL navigation keys; ESC. Colon : not on shifted layer
• Symbols: ~ and HOME on same key (consider Unix/Linux: ~/ alias for Home folder)

• Symbolics lisp machines, (only 100 sold)
• Holy grail of keyboards, seminal in hacker culture
• Magnetic switches based on Hall Effect, contactless, rated at 30B presses / key

• 8000 characters, by combining keys and modifiers
• 7 modifier keys: top, Greek, Shift, Hyper, Super, Meta (alt), Ctrl,
• APL symbols, & Greek symbols on each key
• Keycaps: double shot ABS Honeywell

See gallery for more.

There’s a large community obsessing over keycaps, designing their own set, and having them produced as a mass-buy / kickstarter on massdrop.com. One article detailing the work is: What Goes Into Creating A Custom Keycap Set

\(N\)-key rollover = guaranteed to register \(N\) simultaneous keys (NKRO)

1. A,S,X are pressed simultaneously
2. Z key is registered as pressed as well, even though switch is open

There is a keyboard N-key rollover test (e.g. press “ASDFJKL”).

Lillian Malt, secretary training school (1955-)

• Thumb cluster, use strongest fingers
• Ortholinear (rather than staggered)
• Shoulder width
• Arched key wells,
• Different height for each column, since fingers different length

1997: Contact - Flubber - MIB

• Better production / lower cost
• De facto standard keyboard for programmers & typists
• Many mods, e.g. kinx-project: PCB+Arduino replacement with QMK

• Open source firmware QMK
• Open source PCB & hardware (3D print or CNC acrylic)
• Many forks, e.g. ErgoDox, Moonlander, Iris

Curved & layout like Kinesis, but split like Ergodox.

• Supports Teensy, and Arduino microcontrollers
• Free software
• Macros
• Mouse keys (control mouse from keyboard)
• Layers

Special functions, giving multiple purpose keys

• Combination of multiple keys
• ”Tap-dance”, e.g. single tap \(\rightarrow\) :, double tap \(\rightarrow\) ;
• Sticky one-shot keys, e.g.
  • tap Ctrl, (release), next <key> will be registered as Ctrl+<key>
• Hold vs. tap, e.g.
  • press ESC vs. hold ESC, or
  • tap SHIFT vs. hold SHIFT
• For example, with above one can setup parenthesis (or bracket) on shift keys:
  • tap LSHIFT \(\rightarrow\) ( and
  • tap RSHIFT \(\rightarrow\) )

• Programming languages assume US-layout
• Keyboard layout I’ve used for +15 years, on both laptop and external (Kinesis Advantage) keyboard:

Tools for configuring above keyboard layout in software, on:

GNU/Linux

Xmodmap, autokey, or keyd

OSX

karabiner

Win

autohotkey.com

Place code in ~/.Xmodmap, use xev to find keycode

! altgr + "p" --> "~", asciitilde better than dead_tilde
keycode 33 = p P p P asciitilde NoSymbol

! "altGr" + "i", "o" -->  "{", "}"
keycode 31 = i I i I braceleft NoSymbol
keycode 32 = o O o O braceright NoSymbol

! altgr + "k" / "l" --> "<" / ">"
keycode 45 = k K k K less
keycode 46 = l L l L greater

For full code, see my config files on github

Bonus: Code to disable laptop-keyboard (to put external keyboard on top of laptop keyboard).

• The Holy Grail of ergonomic keyboards.
• Company went bankrupt
• Keyboard community over at geekhack is reverse engineering
  • Home build: Adjustable, Low-Impact Keeb Is About As Comfortable As It Gets
  • or: Squeezebox Keyboard (datahand like)

• Programming using only microphone: Using Python to Code by Voice
• Programming using stenography: Plover: Thought to Text at 240 WPM

• Atreus (CNC in plywood, or acrylic)
• Keyboardio
• Planck (split)
• DMOTE: Dactyl-ManuForm Opposable Thumb Edition
• Other

• Chyrosran22 - Keyboard reviews; (Vintage) keyboard & key switches review
• Down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole; blog post
• Mechanical Keyboards 101; An Introduction To The Hobby