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From: tr@wind.bellcore.com (tom reingold)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: IBM's new keyboard  (was: IBM PS/2)
Message-ID: <1976@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: Fri, 14-Aug-87 10:42:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: bellcore.1976
Posted: Fri Aug 14 10:42:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Aug-87 18:24:44 EDT
References: <1338@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <3735@well.UUCP>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: tr@wind.UUCP (tom reingold)
Organization: BellCoRe (Bell Communications Research)
Lines: 42

In article <3735@well.UUCP> hrh@well.UUCP (Harry Henderson) writes:
>>
>>	o Why are the control and caps lock keys swapped? ARGG. Who designs
>>	  those silly keyboards? I use 4 different keyboards on a daily
>>	  basis, and three of them are IBM (the other's a VT100)!
>
>Can't think of any good reason. The old position for Ctrl allowed you
>to reach many more keys with the same hand. Who designs the keyboards?
>Maybe concert pianists with long fingers.

The reason, though not incredibly sensible, is probably to make it
more like the Selectric (this is my own guess).  Lots of people
criticized IBM for coming out with a lousy keyboard for the original
PC.  It was lousy, most of us agree.  Then the AT was not much better.
People yelled, "You did such a good job with the Selectric.  Why do
you have to be so clever and mess things up?"  So they put CapsLock
where it was on the Selectric.

The problem is that that's a good place on a typewriter but a bad
place on a computer.  Typewriters don't have Control keys.  And
with computers, CapsLock is not needed very often, partly because
CapsLock doesn't even work as a shift-lock as it does on typewriters.
So they went with what was proven, not with what made sense for
the circumstances.  These two concepts were in conflict here, as
they often -- but not always -- are.  It was a good idea to make
the PC keyboard more Selectric-like, but now they went too far.

Anyway, I'm used to it by now.  It used to hurt my fingers to use
the control key because it's so low.  But now, whenever I remember,
I use the control key on the opposite side of the keyboard from
the letter key I'm using.  This alleviated the pain.  That's the
"correct" way to type, if you are a touch typist anyway.  (No, I'm
not a touch typist but I did gain a lot of speed when I started
using the shift key this way.)  And yes, I do hit CapsLock when I
don't mean to.

Over all, I like the keyboard.  And you _can_ run a little program
to turn NumLock off when you boot, if you want.
Tom Reingold
INTERNET:       tr@bellcore.bellcore.com
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