1. ASR-33 Teletype. 100% Mechanical, 100% of the time. Key travel on these was impressive - 1/4" or more! The key feel was that of pushing a rod down until there was a soft "chunk" sound from inside the machine, which meant that the keystroke had been recognized. The key then got a slight upwards pressure until it got back to its starting position. No NKRO here - you could not press the next key until the first key was back to it's starting position.
The shift key you see in the picture was just for symbols - no upper/lower case capability on these charmers! Note the keys that you don't see much anymore: "Here Is", "Rubout", and my all-time favorite - WRU, which stands for "Who Are You?".
ASR-33 Keyboard2. DEC VT-100. Normally these were not particularly bad keyboards, but somehow I was 'blessed' with a personal-for-me-only fresh-out-of-the-box unit that had the keyboard from hell. This keyboard's keys required firm, steady pressure all-the-way-down to register. Unfortunately, you were not able to pick up a new keyboard for $10 if you did not like the one you had. Nope, I was stuck with that awful keyboard until I got a new VT-220 about 2 years later. Lucky me.
3. Apple //c. I had an early production Apple //c. I read elsewhere here that the key switches were Alps, and the keyboards were not bad. Not my unit. The keys required differing levels of pressure to activate, and some of the suckers even made a crunching noise when you pressed 'em down. Other keys just had no key travel at all - just bash 'em and they would register. A later //c+ that I had actually had a wonderful keyboard.
4. IBM 029 Keypunch. Yes, a keypunch - as in 80-column punched cards. A bit of a non-standard keyboard here. No backspace, as it was difficult to erase the little square holes in the card that you mis-punched. No upper/lower case - common on the devices of that era. No sissy top-line numerics, either - just a strange embedded phone-style 10-key number pad accessible using the 'Numeric' key. No Enter or Return keys either - I believe the 'Rel'(ease) key was the equivalent. Just looking at that keyboard is enough to make you think "We're not in Kansas, anymore, Toto!"
Where left shift should be, you have a Numeric key. Where the right shift would be you get an Alphabetic key. Where tab would be you have an 'Error Reset'. Where Enter should be you have 'Left Zero'. There are 'Prog One' and 'Prog Two' keys, but I can't remember what relationship they had to the 'One/Two Program Sel' switch above the keyboard... (First of the group of 4 switches).
Actually, they key feel of the 029 was as good as IBM could make it. People used to sit at those machines for 8 hours a day punching cards - and without the benefit of a backspace key, either! Fatigue meant errors, and errors were not good - error detection in those days was to re-key the cards again, and the keypunch would compare what the card already had punched in it to what the person had just keyed. If the keypunch found a difference the keypunch would beep, indicating that at least one of the two keypunch operators had made an error...
IBM 029 -- Bill
