Marcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
To celebrate the Kickstarter for Shift Happens going well, I thought I would show you 50 keyboards from my collection of really strange/esoteric/meaningful keyboards that I gathered over the years. (It might be the world’s strangest keyboard collection!)
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023

This is technically a bit of a spoiler for the book, but a) a lot of them are not in the book, and b) the book comes out in half a year, and we’ll all forget by then!

Let’s start!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mwichary/shift-happens

Shift Happens: A book about keyboards

The history of keyboards – from early typewriters to modern mechanical marvels – told in two beautiful volumes.

Kickstarter
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
1.
I have a SafeType, thanks to a friend who noticed one about to be thrown away. This is among the most notable and interesting “ergonomic” keyboards, complete with mirrors that help you orient yourself when you’re starting out.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
2.
The Comfort System keyboard is another “ergonomic“ device that is honestly pretty frightening to look at (explaining the challenge of making keyboards like these). You can reposition and reorient each of the three parts independently.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
3.
I love these DataDesk Little Fingers keyboards with smaller keys because you can see exactly when iMac was introduced and how the company tried to “redesign” the keyboard to fit the new style.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
4.
This is another Mac “alternate universe“ keyboard - an Adesso ergonomic keyboard that feels like “what if Apple Adjustable still existed when iMac came around”?
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
5.
This strange “medical” keyboard is more mechanical than you’d expect! I wrote more about it here: https://newsletter.shifthappens.site/archive/a-tale-of-three-skeuomorphs. Cleaning required when flashing!
A tale of three skeuomorphs

The 1983 Apple Lisa wastebasket – the first trashcan in GUI history You’ve always been a bit suspicious of the trashcan on your computer’s imaginary desk...

Shift Happens newsletter
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
6.
Once you’re done with your shift (no pun intended) at the hospital, how about some Pizza? This is i-Opener, one of the many shortlived internet appliances, this one with a gimmick that keeps on gimmicking.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
7.
Speaking of spacebar-adjacent gimmicks, I am mildly obsessed with how beautiful is this first NeXT keyboard from 1987, with a bunch of cool subtle things including a Command *bar* underneath the spacebar. As a matter of fact, I just finished writing an essay on it today!
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
8.
This is Olivetti Praxis 48: perhaps one of the most beautiful among the most beautiful typewriters, and strangely similar in palette to the above NeXT keyboard. You could turn on this (electric) typewriter just by pressing any key. That’s pretty wild.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
9.
This Olympia Reporter typewriter is not beautiful, but it has a lot of POWER THIS and POWER THAT keys that celebrate its marriage with electricity? Why is X and some other keys red? Those are the ones that auto repeat!

Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
10.
This is another typewriter, so proud of a functioning (erasing!) Backspace that it gives this a treatment I have never seen before or after.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
11.
This Turkish typewriter (another Olympia!) means so much to me – the small success of this article from 2015 was probably what was needed for me to start thinking about the book: https://mwichary.medium.com/what-i-learned-about-languages-just-by-looking-at-a-turkish-typewriter-fc840aab1b0a
What I learned about languages just by looking at a Turkish typewriter

I love typewriters. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Every conference room here at Medium is named after a typewriter company. At some point, I requested we make sure to have one with Turkish…

Medium
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
12.
This keypad… is so bad.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
13.
This was meant to be mounted atop Commodore 64 (which I don’t have), an interesting reversal from the early typewriters being nothing more than repurposed music keyboards.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
14.
These two are taking this idea even further – mount these overlays on regular keyboards to turn them into new kinds of interfaces.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
15.
There’s also professional gaming. It was cheaper for me to buy QSENN keyboards and replicate what professional StarCraft gamers were doing in the 1990s, than to find a good existing photo of one of these keyboards.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
16.
And speaking of gaming – we’re all used to the thumb style of typing from the first photo that it was fun to discover the short moment where the gaming keyboards looked like the one in the second photo.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
17.
And a bit earlier, some game consoles tried to reinvent themselves as home computers with keyboard accessories. This is among the strangest of them: a “keyboard” to add BASIC to the Atari 2600.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
18.
I commissioned this “joystick” from @benjedwards and I am so happy with how it turned out. It’s technically a joystick without a stick, but software turned it into a one-key keyboard. It’s F11, currently mapped to muting/unmuting in Zoom. It’s *incredibly* rewarding to press.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
19.
Speaking of strange keyboards, this is my “space cadet” keyboard – a mini keyboard that outputs only spaces, and instead of legends, each key *feels* different. Wrote about it more here: https://newsletter.shifthappens.site/archive/stop-me-if-youve-seen-this-one-before/
Stop me if you’ve seen this one before

That the tech industry is not particularly funny becomes cruelly obvious every April Fools’ Day, when perusing books like these — or, in my world, the day...

Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 12, 2023
20.
And here is a keyboard I built and hid in my shoes, made for one very specific reason. Are you interested what it is? Check out the whole story here: https://newsletter.shifthappens.site/archive/to-walk-among-keyboard-magicians/
To walk among keyboard magicians

I recently gave a talk at a Berlin conference Beyond Tellerrand about keyboards used for fun and for art. I tried to breeze past the obvious stops (ASCII...

Show threadSamuelJohnson

@mwichary I think Doug would have enjoyed your *augmentation*. He believed in BOOTstrapping after all.

(I got to spent a few hours with him once in Menlo Park)

In case you never came across it, a nice ACM puzzle I read once:

Explain why a keyboard lets Doug* log in when sitting down but not when standing up.

*I've forgotten whom originally

Pause here.

Answer:

Keycaps moved (prank) + touch typing when seated & two fingers when standing, not looking & looking respectively.

Feb 13, 2023 at 12:15amWeb