[geeks] "shallow" keyboards

John Francini francini at mac.com
Mon Apr 11 13:32:09 CDT 2011


>   Hunh. I always thought that was a poorly-placed foot pedal. My dad
> and brother both still use those; I should ask them if they are still
> having back pain from keeping one loafer on the desk as they type up
> invoices...

True.  OTOH, I first learned typing (and computing) on ASR-33 teletypes with
their completely identically-shaped keys and no-key rollover; the Selectric I
used in my high school newspaper office was buttery-smooth compared to that.

I still don't like what I call "the Great Control Shift" that happened around
when the IBM PC came out -- where the Control key ended up on the bottom left
instead of to the left of the "A" key, where it had been on Teletypes, VT52s,
VT100s, and even VT2xx terminals.  Who uses the Caps Lock key much, anyway?
And of course, to this old-timer, the Alt key sometimes still reminds me of
the ALTMODE key (now known as Escape).

I do miss "Here Is", too.  What ever happened to answerback?  :-)

j


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