I have no pictures of the "box". I regret that, cause it was ABSURD...
It's not a keyboard, per say, but it
has a keyboard integrated, so I'll consider it close enough to post...
A few years back, I purchased a Friden EC-132 calculator. Understand, this is a 19 Kg (42 pound) beast of a machine, introduced in 1965. It has these huge klunking keys that were actually mechanically encoded... As in pressing each key actuated a series of levers that pressed a series of multiple magnets to encode the numbers... Crazy! It's the BIG one on the left.
So... I see the tracking say it'll be delivered that day, and I'm waiting in my living room for it. I hear the doorbell ring, and it's the UPS guy... With no package. He starts out by APOLOGIZING to me... I'm thinking... 'craaaaap...' and assuming I'm about to see a horror show. He asks me to come to the truck... 'Shiiiiit'...
I look at the "box", and I SEE my Friden EC-132. Not, as in, I see that this is obviously the box that contains my vintage calculator... Nooooo...
I see that the box is maybe 40%-ish missing. Cardboard gone! I can SEE the calculator. It was put diagonally into a single layer corrugated cardboard box (the kind of box you'd ship toilet paper in)! This box was NOT EVEN AS WIDE AS THE CALCULATOR! The person that packed it used LOOSE PEANUTS to fill the void space! NO BUBBLEWRAP or formed foam! The box likely split the first time the first truck hit a hard bump. It split open, spilling the peanuts, and the calculator settled flatter and tore up the box.
I must credit the UPS crew though... They babied that thing the entire way, and it SURVIVED!!!
In all honesty, it was easier to carry the calculator by grabbing the calc rather than the box, and how I expect the UPS employees handled it.
The only lasting damage, were the latches that secure the top cover to the unit. Those were badly tweaked, and don't lock the top cover anymore, but the unit otherwise survived, with minimal damage! UI'm fine with an easy to remove cover... I love the engineering of these old machines! NO integrated circuits! All resistor-diode logic and germanium transistors!
I bet not too many of you guys have used a mechanically
encoded keyboard before! The keys trigger magnetic reed switches by a mechanical mechanism that encodes the key presses into binary code by moving one or more different magnets. The keyboard is also mechanically locked by a mechanism controlled by a solenoid. When an operation is performed, the function key that was pressed locks down and isn't released till the operation is completed. This prevents you from entering new data while it's still processing (It was sloooooow). The keys are also mechanically interlocked so it's impossible to press more than one key at a time. Nifty!
