As most of you should know, keyboards go back a long time. It took a while to get keyboards, to the way that we see and use them today. One of the earlier evolutions of the keyboard, was in early HAM radio. Using a basic keyer to tap out morse-code is and was an excellent system. Knowing morse-code and tapping everything out on a keyer worked, but sending messages was not fast by any means. A highly skilled ham with a bad ass iambic paddle (a keyer) could reach speeds of 60+ wpm, but for most, a keyboard would prove to be far more efficient (but still no where near as awesome as
this)
The evolution of computers happened right along side of ham radio. A lot of times computers and ham would cross paths. Teletype machines were a good example of this. As new IC's became available, and towards the mid 1970s became far cheaper, more and more of these designs became popular. New advancements in crystals, circuits, and ferrite cores, etc. Benefitted both ham and computers equally. Eventually though, computers and ham went their separate ways, to evolve into what they are today. BUT during the time that they were together, ham radio applications for the keyboard, helped shape the computer keyboards of later years. (I won't say "the keyboards of today" since what we have today is the result of corporations owning and controlling most tech advancements, and people using computers without any care as to what they are doing or typing on. aka: money). ARRL or American Radio Relay League (National Association for Amateur Radio) started publishing QST magazine in 1915. It featured content devoted to Amateur Radio, and had all sorts of awesome content.
So if we ignore the terribly botched, incorrect, and poorly written history lesson, that I just wrote then we can get to the good stuff. Now I could not find many easily available scanned in copies of the early days of QST magazine. I found a couple of very poorly seeded torrents. The 1 torrent that I could get, started in 1978, which was about to head towards the decline of keyboards. On the other hand, I did find a shit load of copies of "73" magazine, a very similar magazine, started by Wayne Green in 1960. The same Wayne Green who started "Byte" in 1975 (if anyone else has heard of that). There is a huge archive of 73 magazine over on
Archive.org. I spent a good 15 or so hours yesterday reading all of them, and I saved JPGs, to any interesting keyboard advertisements, or articles. I found them very easy to read, and just packed full of early HAM, and computer history. Again, I have no clue if anyone is interested but if they are, I highly recommend reading through some of them.
Here is also a separate gallery of all the keyboard pages I found to be interesting:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsjXEEHrA
They were all found on that Archive.org link I posted. There is probably a whole bunch more great keyboarding info that I missed but, I figured that would be cool. One thing I noticed, as the years went on, prices getting cheaper led to a major increase in the DIY projects at the time. Of course price is related to demand, but I just mean that as prices got cheaper, people were able to do far more things, using IC's and what have you. I also noticed that at least in 73 magazine, the most common keyswitches, that people used were "microswitches". Often salvaged from other keyboards, or bought in wholesale/surplus, to be used in very specific projects.
So now I will shut up and post the rest of the article in QST magazine for you.
