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Top-level
Marcin Wichary

7.
Speaking of spacebar-adjacent gimmicks, I am mildly obsessed with how beautiful is this first NeXT keyboard from 1987, with a bunch of cool subtle things including a Command *bar* underneath the spacebar. As a matter of fact, I just finished writing an essay on it today!

62 comments
Marcin Wichary

8.
This is Olivetti Praxis 48: perhaps one of the most beautiful among the most beautiful typewriters, and strangely similar in palette to the above NeXT keyboard. You could turn on this (electric) typewriter just by pressing any key. That’s pretty wild.

Marcin Wichary

9.
This Olympia Reporter typewriter is not beautiful, but it has a lot of POWER THIS and POWER THAT keys that celebrate its marriage with electricity? Why is X and some other keys red? Those are the ones that auto repeat!


Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

10.
This is another typewriter, so proud of a functioning (erasing!) Backspace that it gives this a treatment I have never seen before or after.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

11.
This Turkish typewriter (another Olympia!) means so much to me – the small success of this article from 2015 was probably what was needed for me to start thinking about the book: mwichary.medium.com/what-i-lea

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

12.
This keypad… is so bad.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

13.
This was meant to be mounted atop Commodore 64 (which I don’t have), an interesting reversal from the early typewriters being nothing more than repurposed music keyboards.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

14.
These two are taking this idea even further – mount these overlays on regular keyboards to turn them into new kinds of interfaces.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

15.
There’s also professional gaming. It was cheaper for me to buy QSENN keyboards and replicate what professional StarCraft gamers were doing in the 1990s, than to find a good existing photo of one of these keyboards.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

16.
And speaking of gaming – we’re all used to the thumb style of typing from the first photo that it was fun to discover the short moment where the gaming keyboards looked like the one in the second photo.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

17.
And a bit earlier, some game consoles tried to reinvent themselves as home computers with keyboard accessories. This is among the strangest of them: a “keyboard” to add BASIC to the Atari 2600.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

18.
I commissioned this “joystick” from @benjedwards and I am so happy with how it turned out. It’s technically a joystick without a stick, but software turned it into a one-key keyboard. It’s F11, currently mapped to muting/unmuting in Zoom. It’s *incredibly* rewarding to press.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

19.
Speaking of strange keyboards, this is my “space cadet” keyboard – a mini keyboard that outputs only spaces, and instead of legends, each key *feels* different. Wrote about it more here: newsletter.shifthappens.site/a

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

20.
And here is a keyboard I built and hid in my shoes, made for one very specific reason. Are you interested what it is? Check out the whole story here: newsletter.shifthappens.site/a

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

21.
This is one of the most rare keyboards I have – the strange abKey Evolution imported through a friend from Singapore – a keyboard that tried to reinvent perhaps one thing too many. Wrote more about it here: newsletter.shifthappens.site/a

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

22.

And this one from Commodore is not really that unique, except it has this fun property – it reverses the usual beige colour scheme making the keys inside darker. It’s kinda neat!

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

23.
This is a really cheap Bulgarian keyboard with such a poor build quality it cannot be unseen! I wrote more about it here: newsletter.shifthappens.site/a

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

24.
Oh, it gets worse. This calculator keyboard is so cheap it’s not a keyboard at all – just an exposed PCB with a pen to complete the circuit. More about it here: newsletter.shifthappens.site/a

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

25.
And this is the opposite, an incredibly well-built IBM Model F banking typewriter with an enclosure made out of zinc. Hefty enough to stop a bank robbery? Perhaps. More here: newsletter.shifthappens.site/a

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

Halfway through! I need a bit of a break. Is this interesting? Should I keep going!?

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

26.
If your bank robbery goes poorly, you probably end up typing on this Swintec, transparent so that no contraband could be hidden inside. More about transparent tech for prisons in this Techmoan video: youtube.com/watch?v=O3Pfsndsih

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

27.
This simple braille keyboard – Tellatouch – was gorgeous and important. Type a key on one side, and the right braille letter assembles itself on the other.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

28.
This is a more modern version of an adjacent idea. Connect this device to a phone line, and you can speak even if you cannot talk. (Also, I just love any time a keyboard lands itself next to a segmented display.)

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

29.
The creators of this Seiko keyboard recognized a watch with a keyboard wouldn’t make sense – so you could dock your watch and type this way. (I don’t have the watch itself. Too expensive!)

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

30.
Just kidding! Here’s a keyboard on another Seiko watch. It’s an index keyboard – you don’t touch the keys directly, just move the cursor left and right like on Apple TV – since the keys are smaller than 1mm.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

31.
This TI calculator for school use has tiny keys… in between other keys. What a strange thing.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

32.
This calculator went… a different way.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

33.
I love hybrid things and in-betweeners. This tiny Panasonic Toughbook asks a question: what if a BlackBerry keyboard, but twice the width?

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

34.
This one, for TermiFlex, is a one-hand operation, inspired by phone keypads. There are three shifts under your long fingers!

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

35.
Speaking of complex shortcuts, look at this Apple keyboard with Avid software keycaps. The icon on Z is my favourite. I don’t even wanna know what this function does.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

36.
One among many foldable keyboards – this one for Palm devices (RIP).

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

37.
This Sony remote had a built-in keyboard for typing in MiniDisc titles.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

38.
And *this* Sony keyboard had two numeric keypads going in two different directions! One for typical calculator use, and one inspired by mobile phones to allow to chat as easily for people who got used to chatting that way.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

39.
Very happy (and also maybe also a little concerned) to report I am in possession of the entire ProHance lineup of the strange pointing device/keyboard hybrids!

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

40.
But it’s amazing how rarely the graphical user interfaces and keyboards intersect. This here – an old AT&T terminal keyboard – is an exception, providing dedicated keys for window management.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

41.
I had to get this keyboard for a now-obscure Harris word processor, just because LOOK AT THE SHAPE OF THIS ENTER KEY.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

42.
I have seen so many keyboards, but only this one – from a strange titling device meant to be connected to your TV – treats uppercase and lowercase exactly like all the other shifted and unshifted symbols. (With the exception of keyboards for kids, I assume!)

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

43.
Back in the day, keyboards were so expensive that you often started on a “training” keyboard that came without the machine connected to it. Here’s a training keyboard for a Linotype, which is itself a fascinating machine.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

44.
Here’s another one for the first popular line of desk calculators that predates a 10-key keypad.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

45.
(I also have the actual calculator, called a Comptometer. It’s beautiful, really fun to use, and honestly a work of art. A truly impressive machine from the bygone era. I bought it because I was so impressed reading what it can do.)

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

46.
Here’s another practice keyboard, with a record to play to teach you how to type!

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

47.
And here’s the most modern version of a practice keyboard I know of – itself a small computer. After that, the likes of Mavis Beacon took over teaching typing in software.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

48.
Speaking of the 1980s, keyboards from failed computers often found a second life as Radio Shack components you could reuse in your DIY projects. Here’s one from a home computer called Coleco Adam.

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

49.
While we’re speaking about failed computers, this is One Laptop Per Child’s interesting-looking keyboard. (I think OLPC is considered a failure? I’m not 100% sure. This computer is not in the book, so I haven’t researched that carefully.)

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

50. And here is Canon Cat, maybe my favourite failed machine of all time. Look at these Leap keys! I’m somewhat in love with this machine.

newsletter.shifthappens.site/a

Marcin Wichary replied to Marcin

That’s it! I hope you liked this sneak peek of my collection– if you did, consider backing the book since this is the level of quality I’ve been aiming at for the visual side… there are a lot more photos like these, and of course a lot more great stories attached to them.

kickstarter.com/projects/mwich

Sara Joy :happy_pepper: replied to Marcin

@mwichary gah. I really want this book but can't really justify it. Maybe there'll be an edition in future that I will treat myself to ❤️

Kyle Bradbury replied to Marcin

@mwichary I loved it, and I’m so excited for the book. Thank you!

Axel ⌨🐧🐪🚴😷 | R.I.P Natenom replied to Marcin

@mwichary: Thanks for that thread. Gives me much more of an idea what to expect from your book.

knack replied to Marcin

@mwichary On the "Strange Ergonomics" front, I'm strongly considering the KeyMouse, which has a concept I've not seen anywhere else...

e.pilot replied to Marcin
annaraven replied to Marcin

@mwichary How cool! Looking forward to the book coming out just around the time for my sweetie's birthday...

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