Clickety Clack

Clickety Clack

Patrick Chiang

Since the dawn of time man has striven to be unique, to stand out from the crowd, and to be recognized. Take the middle ages for example, each ruling kingdom had its own flag which would be displayed at all times in the kingdom as well as on the battlefield. This idea of being unique has led to what we call “customizing”. Whether it’s to fit personal taste or functionality, people have been customizing their purchases for ages. So how about keyboards?

The predecessor of today’s modern keyboard derived from the ancient machine which we had dubbed the typewriter. From its birth the typewriter had one sole purpose, and that was to make data entry easier. Contrary to its goal, the first typewriter often made data entry more difficult. Commonly used letters such as the “th” in “the” would not be recognized when pressed simultaneously due to the internal mechanisms as well as the lettering layout. From the chaos rose the ever popular “QWERTY” layout especially created to solve said problem.

The years passed and it had been quite apparent that the “QWERTY” layout was here to stay. Fast forward a few decades to the birth of IBM and its widespread “Model M” keyboard which utilized the buckling spring design. I’m pretty sure you remember it when you were young too. Big, gray, clunky, and made a clicking sound every time you pressed a key.

As computers quickly caught on keyboard demand equally skyrocketed. Production quickly shifted into quantity rather than quality. How do we make keyboards faster and cheaper to produce? The answer to that question is possibly what you’re typing on today. The common keyboard we use, use rubber dome switches which work via circuit board printed on silicone. When the two layers touch the key then registers. Rubber dome switches wear out over time and are often the culprit of "mushy" feeling keyboards.

Recently though, more people have been switching back to keyboard roots such as the Model M as well as mechanical switch keyboards. The mechanical keyboard is composed of individual “Cherry MX” switches under each key which are rated for 50 million keystrokes meaning you’ll be able to do a whole lot of typing. So why exactly wouldn’t we be using the product with a longer lifespan? Ed Ferraton, Cherry