About the Invention of the Computer Keyboard
Isaac Newton once said about his discoveries, "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." In a similar way, the fundamental computer keyboard is the result of a very inconspicuous and humble beginning. Initially invented as a means to increase productivity in the office, the keyboard--particularly the QWERTY keyboard system--has been integrated into the electronic age with the inception of the computer.
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In the Beginning
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The computer keyboard is a remnant of the now-antiquated typewriter. The typewriter was invented by Christopher Sholes in 1868. The keyboard was initially in alphabetical order; however, the most often-used type bars were too close to each other, interfered with each other, and jammed. Sholes rearranged the letters on the keyboard into the QWERTY system used today. The QWERTY system evenly spaces the most and least commonly used letters in the English alphabet; this gave the type bars enough time to fall back into their slots before the next key came up to strike the type roller. Other keyboard systems have been invented, but the QWERTY is by far the most common.
The Computer Cometh
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The computer as we know it today has a long history. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, starts the time line in 1939, when Hewlett-Packard was founded. The Colossus, a computer built in 1944, read long rolls of punched paper to break Nazi codes during World War II. The ENIAC of 1946 (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) received and read input data from punch cards. It was 1,000 times faster than any other computing machine at the time. It could handle 5,000 operations per second and required 1,000 square feet of floor space.
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The Input/Output Human-Computer Interactions Develop
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Magnetic tape, inexpensive and adequate for mass storage, began to replace the old paper tape and punch card technology of the 1940s. The first commercially-produced computer was built in 1950, purchased by the U.S. Navy. Drums pulsated magnetic tracks on a cylinder. In 1952, the UNIVAC was first to use a typewriter-type of human-to-computer interaction system called the UNIPRINTER; it analyzed the returns of the 1952 election, and accurately predicted Dwight Eisenhower as the next president. In 1956, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers developed the first direct keyboard input for computers.
QWERTY Meets the Electronic Age
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In 1963, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange created a binary code of zeros and ones to represent letters and numbers and the carriage return function on a typewriter. This enabled different computers from various manufacturers to share data with each other. All these developments over the years combined to form the keyboard interface that we use today. Because people were so accustomed to the QWERTY pattern of keys on the keyboard, the system stuck. The computer keyboard developed technologically, but the keypad system remained the same as it had been since 1868.
The Dawn of the Personal Computer
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A computer keyboard is a minicomputer. Inside the keyboard is a tiny processor and some electronic circuitry, called the "key matrix." If you were to open up the keyboard, you would see rows and columns of circuits beneath the keys. When you press a key, you are opening a switch and sending an electronic signal through the circuit to the computer. The computer processes the signal and displays a letter, number, or symbol on the monitor screen.
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References
- Photo Credit keyboard image by Fyerne from Fotolia.com
