First computer keyboard with "inverted 't'" arrow layout?

[mr_a500]

Everybody mentions the 1982 DEC LK201 when talking about the first inverted 't' arrow layout, but I was sure I saw that layout on a couple earlier keyboards. Check out this ADDS Envoy, introduced in 1972:



http://terminals.classiccmp.org/wiki/in ... _Envoy_620

(I posted a photo of this thing in another thread about ADDS keyboards, but never noticed the arrow layout.)

[Muirium]

1234567890

Besides the legends, which are narrow and mighty lively when it comes to alignment, that's a great looking board. I wonder if the inverted T was just a design byproduct of putting the big HOME button underneath them, where down would usually go.

Have we got a name for those "navigational pads" that were in fashion through the 70s and early 80s? There was a lot you could do with them. The Honeywell's old fashioned cross, for instance:



Anyway, I still think the DEC board gets credit for introducing the inverted T as an independent design element. Rather than a piece within a larger block of keys.

[mr_a500]

The earliest I can find for that "cross" arrow layout is 1970, on the Hazeltine 2000:





(I'd love to have those giant LEDs on a keyboard - looks so... important)

[mr_a500]

Oops - I missed the Univac Uniscope 100 from 1969:



It's even better because there's no home button in the middle. I've got to get one of those.

Edit: It goes back even further - to the Uniscope 300 from 1964! (300 was earlier than 100?)

Univac 300.png

[7bit]

...

The computer of the future, with wide-screen and all-white spherical doubleshots on its keyboard!

[ماء]

Oops - I missed the Univac Uniscope 100 from 1969:



It's even better because there's no home button in the middle. I've got to get one of those.

Edit: It goes back even further - to the Uniscope 300 from 1964! (300 was earlier than 100?)

Univac 300.png

i like the keycap like Corsair Rubber keycaps
spacing keycap looks good

[nourathar]

drool ! drool !

[mr_a500]

Anyway, I still think the DEC board gets credit for introducing the inverted T as an independent design element. Rather than a piece within a larger block of keys.

I'd agree with you there... if the DEC LK201 inverted T actually was a separate element. It appears to be connected:

[Muirium]

Hmm… I should have looked up a picture instead of trusting my memory. Supposedly DEC did a bunch of cursor shape research when making that board, at least. And the blanks on either side of the up arrow do really help define it. My fingers always grab for the distinctive corner of keys between left and up when I head down there.

Where'd you get that Hazeltine picture anyway? It has significant forgotten future power in it! Great find.

[mr_a500]

http://terminals.classiccmp.org/ has a listing of old terminals. There's some interesting stuff there. Sadly, many of the listings don't have photos of the terminals.

I just noticed that the main page has links to both Deskthority and Geekhack.

[BobbyD]

Just happened on your site while surfing for historical info on the Univac Uniscope 100 computer terminal.
FYI, I did all of the Industrial Design for this terminal as a Design Consultant to Univac in St. Paul, MN, USA.
This work included the keyboard which seems to be your interest. One of the notable design characteristics of the
keyboard is it's very thin dimension. When I discovered the very small depth dimension of the KB switches it presented and opportunity to make a strong and unique visual design statement. Univac project management was intrigued by this possibility and thus it was incorporated in the design early on. There was no other terminal on the market at that time using a thin KB and this feature served well to distinguish the product. The front panel of the terminal was concepted as an "unbound information plane" where digital information would enter and depart at light speed. A major objective was low manufacturing cost. The all steel cabinet was produced by roll-forming, a high speed metal forming technique. Steel construction also provided effective EMR shielding which was highly desirable for security purposes, as in finance and military.
The KB was detachable so it could be used remotely from the main computer and also allow more than one KB to attach to the same terminal. A special cover was designed to attach to the rear of the KB when used removed from the terminal.
Univac Engineering was located in St. Paul, MN but the Uniscope 100 was produced in Salt Lake City, Utah by the Communications and Terminals Div. This was a highly successful product for Univac, used widely by airlines. For example, Lufthansa installed them world-wide for their reservation system. More than 235,000 U-100s were produced, the highest volumn product ever made by Univac. It was introduced with a full page ad and photo in the NY Times. The design was recognized with a WESCON Design Award (Western Electronics Conferance).

[xwhatsit]

BobbyD—thanks for your information! Always cool to hear the backstory behind a piece of equipment

I'm intrigued by the choice of rollforming. You must have known you'd have fairly high volumes before you went to the expense of having a set of roll tooling made. An unusual shape, must have been a neat looking rollformer!

Very cool looking terminal, very unique (love that Return key). Congratulations!

[urbancamo]

[/quote]

I think that might be a picture of one of my LK201s
The other thing special about the LK201 is the sheer number of different keycap profiles. I forget the exact number but it's got to be at least 6. DEC spent a lot of time trying to get it right. I think they probably did from a terminal perspective, but as a workstation keyboard with mouse it sucks because it's just too damn long!

Mark.

[urbancamo]

BobbyD—thanks for your information! Always cool to hear the backstory behind a piece of equipment

I'm intrigued by the choice of rollforming. You must have known you'd have fairly high volumes before you went to the expense of having a set of roll tooling made. An unusual shape, must have been a neat looking rollformer!

Very cool looking terminal, very unique (love that Return key). Congratulations!

That return key is completely out of this world! Did you notice the three '0' keys at the bottom of the numeric keypad? I've not seen many keyboards with keys duplicated in such a brazen manner!

[mr_a500]

Just happened on your site while surfing for historical info on the Univac Uniscope 100 computer terminal.
FYI, I did all of the Industrial Design for this terminal as a Design Consultant to Univac in St. Paul, MN, USA.

Wow, it's an honour to have the designer of the Univac Uniscope 100 talking to us here. That is one beautiful terminal - and so advanced looking for the time.

I'd be interested in anything else you could tell us about it.

[Muirium]

Indeed. You've come to the right place for telling your story. The eventual existence of a curious community of classic keyboard buffs is the reason why your memory insisted on storing "why did I remember this?" details in the first place!

This was voted Find of the Year in 2013:

http://deskthority.net/photos-f62/univa ... t6489.html

[002]

We need some equivalent of /r/bestof
Thanks for sharing, BobbyD.

[mr_a500]

This was voted Find of the Year in 2013:

http://deskthority.net/photos-f62/univa ... t6489.html

No, that keyboard uses different switches. See this thread about the Uniscope 100 keyboard. (yet another HaaTa find)

And this is the incredible thinness that BobbyD is talking about:


Compare to the Univac F-1355-00:

[HaaTa]

BobbyD, whoa, that's super cool

Since you were the designer, I'm not sure how much info you have on this. But...
I have 3 different Univac Uniscope 100 keyboards, each of them are slightly different.

1971 - Rubber domes (I think the earliest rubber domes I've seen)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/triplehaa ... 687142956/
https://www.google.com/patents/US3603756

1974 - ITW/Licon Magnetic Valve switches
https://plus.google.com/photos/11384566 ... 0244780945

1978 - ITW/Cortron Magnetic Valve switches
https://plus.google.com/photos/11384566 ... 9966802705

While ITW has had a patent on the mechanism since 1956 (https://www.google.com/patents/US3035253) and an actual keyboard-like switch since 1969 (https://www.google.com/patents/US3638221, https://www.google.com/patents/US3714611), sometime around 1974 Univac switched to using ITW/Licon as the keyboard manufacturer (https://www.google.com/patents/US4099176). Do you know why and when the switch was made?
The rubber dome membrane keyboard looks like it was made by Univac (has a similar style of PCB compared to my other Univac keyboards).

(Licon changed their name to Cortron, both were/are subsidiaries of ITW/Illinois Tool Works)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Actual rubber dome on a stick!

[BobbyD]

BobbyD—thanks for your information! Always cool to hear the backstory behind a piece of equipment

I'm intrigued by the choice of rollforming. You must have known you'd have fairly high volumes before you went to the expense of having a set of roll tooling made. An unusual shape, must have been a neat looking rollformer!

Very cool looking terminal, very unique (love that Return key). Congratulations!

xwhatsit:
Univac Engineering and Marketing got their U-100 act together regarding advanced design features, product capability, and mfg.costs and concluded that there would be a huge market for this new leading edge terminal. This was at a time when distributed terminals were the next wave and everybody was jumping in with product offerings. With this marketing projection they made the bold step to commit to roll forming a steel shell vs. plastic injection molding. The added feature of integrated EMR shielding was also a strong selling point for data security. Yes, roll forming tooling is expensive and is only economical for high production volume. Apparently they were right considering the high sales numbers (~235,000 units). The removable keyboard also provided flexibility to adapt the U-100 to other configurations.
For example, we provided design concepts for airline reservation stations (as in airport ticketing counters) where the detached KB was built into the countertop in the normal position and the main cabinet buried below the counter with a viewing port cut down into the countertop, all providing a clean and expansive work surface. Once the terminal caught hold in the marketplace there were many other follow-on products that worked with the U-100 system and were coordinated with the same design theme. We designed a modem, controller, a desktop printer, and dual tape cassette auxillary memory.

In case you might be interested, we also designed the shipping carton for the Uniscope 100 Terminal. By the time the U-100 was approaching production everyone in that division was getting pretty excited for their new product. They wanted it shipped in something special, to make a strong Univac statement when it arrived at the customer's office. I have pictures of it somewhere and will post here if they can be located. The shipping carton graphic design won an Art Directors Club award.

[BobbyD]

[quote="HaaTa" post_id=175703]BobbyD, whoa, that's super cool

Since you were the designer, I'm not sure how much info you have on this. But...
I have 3 different Univac Uniscope 100 keyboards, each of them are slightly different.

Do you know why and when the switch was made?
The rubber dome membrane keyboard looks like it was made by Univac (has a similar style of PCB compared to my other Univac keyboards).

HaaTa:

Sorry, can't be of much help on the technical details of the U-100 KB switches. It was my understanding at the time that Univac made the rubber dome version and this was a relatively new concept at the time. I remember the impressive soft feel upon trying it out, different than previous designs that I had experienced.

The edge view of the KB is composed of two elements; the top deck and a lower base. The thinner top deck was designed as a visual continuation of the thin peripheral edge of the main cabinet, the intersection being at the curled top edge of the KB. This would visually integrate the two data surfaces.

I have a drawing of the KB and it says that it was produced as a die-casting, which would be aluminum or zinc, can't recall. If the drawing is of interest, it could be scanned and posted here.

[HaaTa]

I have a drawing of the KB and it says that it was produced as a die-casting, which would be aluminum or zinc, can't recall. If the drawing is of interest, it could be scanned and posted here.

If anything I just want to see the drawings!!

No worries on not knowing. It's not everyday that someone comes around and says "Hey, I designed that Univac keyboard"

[bitemyweewee]

Oooh, ADDS. I have their 1010 terminal keyboard in my possession. No milage on it either, it's like new. No inverted T arrows though
http://imgur.com/a/vq9iQ
$4 at a garage sale.

[BobbyD]

Just want to correct a mistake in my previous post.
The Univac Uniscope 100 terminal was introduced on May 16, 1969, coordinated with a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, not the NY Times.

[BobbyD]

Just happened on your site while surfing for historical info on the Univac Uniscope 100 computer terminal.
FYI, I did all of the Industrial Design for this terminal as a Design Consultant to Univac in St. Paul, MN, USA.

Wow, it's an honour to have the designer of the Univac Uniscope 100 talking to us here. That is one beautiful terminal - and so advanced looking for the time.

I'd be interested in anything else you could tell us about it.

Here is some more technical info on he Univac Uniscope 100 Keyboard:

[BobbyD]

Just happened on your site while surfing for historical info on the Univac Uniscope 100 computer terminal.
FYI, I did all of the Industrial Design for this terminal as a Design Consultant to Univac in St. Paul, MN, USA.

Wow, it's an honour to have the designer of the Univac Uniscope 100 talking to us here. That is one beautiful terminal - and so advanced looking for the time.

I'd be interested in anything else you could tell us about it.

Here is some more technical info on he Univac Uniscope 100 Keyboard:

(sorry Guys, I have 5 engineering drawings in jpeg format and have tried several times to post them but it doesn't work. Any suggestions?)

[jacobolus]

Perhaps post them to http://imgur.com and then include them here using an 'img' tag?

[Muirium]

Try DT's built in hosting. (If you're in the quick reply field, click Full Editor for it to appear.) Click the "Upload Attachment" tab under the main text field and choose a file and hit upload, then repeat. They'll show up attached to your post. Click preview to check.

If that doesn't work (because they're too big?) just email the buggers to info at deskthority.net and PM me to go look, and I'll sort them out!

[BobbyD]

Try DT's built in hosting. (If you're in the quick reply field, click Full Editor for it to appear.) Click the "Upload Attachment" tab under the main text field and choose a file and hit upload, then repeat. They'll show up attached to your post. Click preview to check.

If that doesn't work (because they're too big?) just email the buggers to info at deskthority.net and PM me to go look, and I'll sort them out!

Muirium
I have sent 2 emails for a total of 5 drawings to [email protected] requesting that they be forwarded to you so you can post them to the KB site. Thanks for the assist. Hope they will be of
interest to your group. If they are, there is lots more info here.
BobbyD