the old and unseen

[BigBrother]

I've seen a lot of people talking about keyboards that are colorless by design- the model M for example isn't all that coloured, white, black, beige and so on... with a colored LED.

So what happened to those colorful keyboards like this:

(not specifically this one but these kind of keyboards with the color and glossy keys)
(specifically, this keyboard has a connector that i've never seen before, can anyone name it?)

[keyb_gr]

As you can see in the IBM Wiki, IBM 'boards have never been particularly colorful. That's the Business in IBM, I guess. And then it seems pastel tones were in fashion in the late '70s and early '80s, replacing the former bolder tones (the early '80s also saw cylindrical keycaps appear, which ultimately displaced the classic cupped ones). Maybe they threw in a pinch of ergonomic research, too, who knows.

Then came the highly successful IBM PC, along with a bunch of clones which commonly also copied the color scheme and other attributes. Beige dominated the PC world until the late '90s at least. I don't think anyone made black PCs until the NeXT computers had appeared, and even then I could only name one brand offering ones here in Germany (which would be ESCOM).

[Forsaken]

That connector has so many pins, there might not even be a controller inside the keyboard itself...

[BigBrother]

incidentally, i found it on eBay for about 31$ (including shipping): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370390265273&rvr_id=&crlp=1_263602_263622&UA=%3F*F%3F&GUID=0b7d90181290a0268483c9b3ffd9b125&itemid=370390265273&ff4=263602_263622
"FLUKE 1720A INSTRUMENT  CONTROLLER PROGRAMMER KEYBOARD"
seems like it's a special 'instrument controller programmer keyboard' what ever that means. :/

[trievalot]

where is the windoze key?

[chimera15]

It looks like something Edison invented. lol

[EverythingIBM]

As you can see in the IBM Wiki, IBM 'boards have never been particularly colorful. That's the Business in IBM, I guess. And then it seems pastel tones were in fashion in the late '70s and early '80s, replacing the former bolder tones (the early '80s also saw cylindrical keycaps appear, which ultimately displaced the classic cupped ones). Maybe they threw in a pinch of ergonomic research, too, who knows.

Then came the highly successful IBM PC, along with a bunch of clones which commonly also copied the color scheme and other attributes. Beige dominated the PC world until the late '90s at least. I don't think anyone made black PCs until the NeXT computers had appeared, and even then I could only name one brand offering ones here in Germany (which would be ESCOM).

IBM didn't want colourful things because... it's for business! I don't want stupid colourful things when I'm doing work. It just needs to be nice and plain.

Yeah, there were some black computers before the next. I forget the name of it though.

[ch_123]

[quadibloc]

So what happened to those colorful keyboards like this:

The IBM Personal Computer (5150) happened to them.

It is, basically, as simple as that. Before the IBM PC, it was normal for keys to have a spherical indentation on the top (cupped keys) rather than a cylindrical one. It was normal for keys to have the symbols on them centered, instead of flush left.

But as soon as the PC came out - and it was, admittedly, superior to have a cylindrical indentation, because then you could put transparent stickers on the top of the key - everyone wanted to give their keyboard the "look" of the PC. Nearly all the PC clones (except a very few, like the MBC 555 from Sanyo, and the Tandy 1000) copied it, understandably. The Laser 128 copied it. Apple copied it, although with some twists of their own (italic characters, brown keys).

And the technology of the PC's keyboard, being based on scan codes, instead of generating ASCII characters, became the norm for keyboards as well, also displacing the previous behavior.

[didjamatic]

Lookie Here

[TexasFlood]

IBM didn't want colourful things because... it's for business! I don't want stupid colourful things when I'm doing work. It just needs to be nice and plain.

Yeah, there were some black computers before the next. I forget the name of it though.

IBM has always been very controlling of color & logo on products.  Back in the day it was ever more so. Find some interesting reading regarding the thinkpad and color below.  Read it here or look at the links for the original source material.

IBM used to hand out pads to employees so they could jot down to-do lists. The pad, which was designed to fit into a dress-shirt pocket, was bound in leather and embossed in gold with the IBM motto, "Think." Wainwright, a senior planner at IBM Corp said, "Let's call it the ThinkPad.”. The IBM corporate naming committee objected to it since they felt the name would not translate into other languages. However it turned out, that they did not have to translate it anyway. How do you say ThinkPad in Japanese? Simple. Just “ThinkPad”.

[Richard] Sapper felt that the design should be clean, plain and elegant. His wooden prototype was based on the shoukadou bentou, the traditional, black-lacquered, Japanese lunch box. It was small and compact. Desk space is scarce in Japan, and, since security is an issue with notebooks, a computer the size of a bentou box could be locked in a filing cabinet.

One final change made to the TrackPoint was suggested by Sapper. The tip of Selker's and Rutledge's pointing stick had been black, a color that got lost in the black ThinkPad keyboard. Sapper said, "Let it sing," and the tip was changed to red, which brought about a closing act of corporate silliness rivaled only by Abbott and Costello trying to decide who's on first.
Hardy explains: "IBM had a cherished standard which said that the only thing that could be red on a product was an emergency power switch, those enormous switches on the mainframes. To have the little TrackPoint tip subjected to this same standard was absurd, but, given the situation at IBM then, we knew the red dot wouldn't get through the system. So we toned it down a shade and called it magenta."
Soon afterward, Designer Yamazaki received a call from an IBM standards watchdog, who wanted to know why manufacturing had produced these tiny red parts.
Yamazaki said, "They're not red. They're magenta."
"No," replied the watchdog. "They're red."
The two men battled back and forth, then phoned Hardy to adjudicate the argument.
"They aren't red, they're magenta," Hardy assured the standards overseer, which led to a rambling, philosophical debate on the ontology of redness. Still, the watchdog held his position--no red allowed, not even if you called it magenta.
Hardy suggested that they take the argument to a higher level, confident that the watchdog would shrink from continuing such a trivial discussion with senior management. That was how it played out. The tip kept its magenta classification, and in the coming years, with the introduction of each new ThinkPad, the color of the rubber tip was increased a shade until it finally became a bright red symbol of the brand.

Sources:
Wikipedia "Tom Hardy (designer)"
Peter Golden website "Big Blue's big adventure" parts I & II[/i]

[EverythingIBM]

Show Image

That's not really that colourful. Most of the older IBM power switches were red (I love those flicky switches). Having blue keys, well, that's a given.

As for the green button... well... IBM used green text for "alt" a lot. Particularly on older thinkpads and early model Ms.

[BigBrother]

so does anyone know where i can get one of these older keyboards?

[EverythingIBM]

so does anyone know where i can get one of these older keyboards?

Ebay, amazon, kijiji, pawn shops, garbage dumps, MW's house etc.

[Dwhangkhui]

Show Image

looks like the keyboard controller was inside the computer. I think the pins are basically a matrix hardwired to the switches.

[n3rrd]

How do the spherical key caps feel as compared to the more common cylindrical/flat key caps?  I love the aesthetic, but haven't ever had a chance to use anything with them.

[ch_123]

I don't think there's any particular advantage of one over the other for typing feel, but the prevailing theory was that they were designed to force the user to hit the centre of the key as keyswitches were more sensitive back then.

[microsoft windows]

That makes sense.

[n3rrd]

Things that make sense aren't always right.

I go with the "Engineering Inertial Effects Theory".

Keys on an IBM Selectric.

Show Image

So, you're saying...?  lol.  You likey?  No likey?

[Forsaken]

The Kinesis Advantage has both spherical and cylindrical tops. The home keys are spherical, and just a bit smaller on top than the rest of the keys, which are cylindrical. I think the spherical top home keys feel weird.

[quadibloc]

Engineering inertia is certainly a possibility.

Early typewriters had a round metal frame holding down a clear piece of plastic (or perhaps mica!) over a round piece of cardboard with the character printed on it.

So, although I remember some Underwood office manual typewriters having a cylindrical key surface, generally molded plastic typewriter keys had a spherical indentation. Partly to preserve the feel of keys as they existed before, and partly so that touch-typists could locate keys in two dimensions. (Deeper indentations, or bumps, on the F and J keys are a computer terminal thing, not a typewriter thing.)

Early IBM electric typewriters (less early than the one whose photo I recently posted) - and the Flexowriter based on them - had Bakelite keys that were 1/2 inch square, with a circular area containing a spherical indentation. (Because they were Bakelite, they couldn't be double-shot molded, but instead had the white letters filled in.)

Later IBM electric typewriters, the Model 29 keypunch, and the Selectric, of course, got fancier. But the keys were spherical because that's what everyone was used to.

Then the PC came along, allowing transparent overlays on the keytops by having a cylindrical surface, and suddenly cylindrical keys with left-justified characters became "modern" and fashionable - IBM started the trend, and everyone followed.

It's not unlike see-through calculators coming out soon after the iMac.

There may have been no particularly good reason for the old way, but there wasn't much of one for the new way either.

[Rajagra]

Surely if you want to force typists to hit the centre of the keytop, you should make it domed, not with a spherical hollow! The hollow increases the likelihood of hitting a key off-centre.

My theory is that fingertips are rounded.

[kishy]

My theory is that fingertips are rounded.

Your theory is crap, fingers are triangular prisms.

[ricercar]

Isn't everything made using triangles?