Keyboards

The keyboard is an input device, partially modeled after the typewriter keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as electronic switches. While most keyboard keys produce letters, numbers or signs (characters), other keys or simultaneous key presses can produce actions or computer commands.In normal usage, the keyboard is used to type text and numbers into a word processor, text editor or other program. A keyboard is also used to give commands to the operating system of a computer, such as Windows' Control-Alt-Delete combination, which brings up a task window or shuts down the machine.

The QWERTY keyboard layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Milwaukee. Early type writers had the tendency of the typebars to clash and jam if struck in rapid succession. It took Sholes over six years to arrives at the four-row, upper case keyboard approaching the modern QWERTY standard. A further adjustment included placing the "R" key in the place previously allotted to the period mark, thus enabling salesmen to impress customers by pecking out the brand name "TYPE WRITER" from one keyboard row.

There was no particular technological requirement for the QWERTY layout to be used for computer keyboards. The first computer terminals such as the Teletype were typewriters that could produce and be controlled by various computer codes. These used the QWERTY layouts, and added keys such as escape (ESC) which had special meanings to computers.

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