Historical question - when did dome switches eat the world?

[esr]

I've been doing some revisions to the Wikipedia entry on the Model M recently.  There's one I'd like to do, but I can't pin down a date or a source.

When did dome switches kick the props out from under the Model M and other mechanical-switch designs?  I can't find any web source more specific than "the 1990s", which matches my recollection but I'd like to pin it down to a smaller range of years.  Also I need a documentary source to make Wikipedia happy.

FYI it's my doing that the Wiki entry now traces the Model M layout to the VT220, I found a smoking-gun source for that. I've also updated it to cover Unicomp's tooling refresh and the New Model M.  And I added a "Layout" column to the table of variants.  You buckling-spring fans out there might want to look that over and see if you can pin down some places where I had to put question marks.

[Pylon]

It happened over a number of years. IBM sold buckling spring Model M's, rubber dome Model M's, and Chicony KB-xxxx rubber domes concurrently. Likewise, Dell sold black Alps AT101W's alongside rubber dome AT101R's for some time. My parents (who are in no way into keyboards) bought their first computer in 1999 and it came with a black Alps mechanical keyboard (forgot the model). The mechanical to rubber dome transition didn't happen at once.

[yui]

Rubber dome was seen as an upgrade at the beginning, and if i recall correctly it was an option and not the default, so did cost more, only once manufacturing cost went down that they took over as the default, one thing you could try to do to close that range is to search in catalogue of the era and find when you 1st see rubber dome appear as the default keyboards and not an option, or when foam and foil disappeared.

[Findecanor]

I think the Model M and other clicky keyboards had become obsolete in many people's eyes together with the typewriter.
The clicky sound was supposed to give audial feedback similar to as from a typewriter because those were what office workers had been more used to at the time when the IBM PC was introduced.

I would speculate that rubber domes won over linear switches when the field of human-computer interaction got more influence in the late '80s and early '90s and experts in the field still recognised the value of tactile feedback.

Rubber dome keyboards in the '90s were not necessarily that bad. In my circles, I remember the major three varieties of keyboards for PCs in '97 were BTC slider-over-dome, Key Tronic's ErgoForce and KT2000, and Mitsumi buckling rubber sleeve. The first two are seen in high regard even now. (and I don't know why the third isn't)
I think the real cheapening happened later when the PC became a consumer item, and everyone started to have a PC at home and connect to the Internet — then was when rubber domes got a bad name.
I remember that Microsoft especially had some keyboards with really bad key feel, and such big companies with lots of influence often set the norm.