The New Road

Typing

I started typing on my mother's Royal typewriter when I was around nine, I think. It looked something like this. It was fun because to type took tremendous hand strength. The keys had about a half inch of deflection before the letter impression was made on the page. In fact, you had time to think as your finger went down. So if that wasn't the rigth key you could balk it and just waggle the hammer somewhere between it's resting place and the point at which it strikes the page.

I remember being blown away by the carraige return key that I found on the selectric that I used at my mom's office.

After that I worked on a TRS-80 model I at Andy Baker's house, and a Model III at my high school. I remember at the time that I found the keys kind of mushy for my taste, having come from the school of hard knocks on the Royal.

The Apple II keyboard was a little better. And other keyboards at the time, like the Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo), Atari 400, and others were just a joke. Though perhaps the best keyboard joke ever was the chiclet keyboard on the PC Jr. But I digress.

Anyway, then there was the Original IBM PC keyboard. A keyboard that I fell in love with right away for two big reasons. First, there was the heft. The thing was easily four pounds. It was a literal weapon. The second was the clicky keyboard. It had the tactile sense of a real typewriter without the huge deflection. Anyway, it turns out there were other fans as well, as you can see by the site.

Not that I'm aganist the spongy keyboard. There is a time and place for a quiet keyboard, like a conference, or something. But if I wan't to really get something done there is nothing like a big clackity keyboard. Like the Tactile Pro that I'm writing this on.