The Crown of (Keyboard) Creation

"The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!"

Two or three people may be interested in this, though I'm not sure whom, except former IBM Selectric typewriter operators who still use a keyboard all day. In the deep past, when we were using "AT" level PCs (286s & 386s), one could get an 82-key or 101-key IBM keyboard.

Those keyboards, made by Lexmark for IBM, were wonderful, though somewhat noisy, state of the art keyboards. I loved them despite the racket (or maybe partially because of the racket, because it always sounded like one was doing something). They were a very close match to the Selectric in the area of tactile feel, the result of using the same "buckling spring" technology to produce the classic "click" feel of the key actions. To be fair, the computer keyboards were only half as noisy as the Selectrics, since they weren't accompanied by the hum of the electric motor and noise of the moving mechanical parts. Regardless of the noise, it could easily be argued that the IBM buckling spring keyboards were the crown of keyboard creations. 

I had one of the 82-key keyboards which didn't survive the 286 era and two of the 101s that I used on 386s, Pentium, and Pentium III computers (Pentium II computers were such dogs that I wouldn’t buy one). The 101s required periodic maintenance to keep them functional. Maintenance was a matter of partially disassembling the keyboard and cleaning it. I kept the 101s working for years, but both finally bit the dust, or choked on the dust, since I could no longer get them working with a good cleaning.  

Whilst daydreaming yesterday about using a Selectric II typewriter to write notes with, it suddenly occurred to me that I could probably find a used 101 keyboard for sale on the Web. It is amazing how often a Web search does not occur to me. I did a search and turned up a couple used ones. I then stumbled upon an article that traced the manufacturers of the 101. Amazingly enough, the 101s are still being made and one can buy them with USB connectors! Here is the link:  http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cus101usenon.html.

I'm still thinking about picking up a Selectric II in the near future because of the nature of all the notes I've been scribbling using Stage 3A writing technology (paper and pen). I don't like the look of my hand script, and I don't like the act of writing full 8.5" X 11" pages. I should have taken shorthand in school... A slight return to Stage 4 writing technology could make my note-taking easier. But I'm quite happy to discover that it is still possible to get the best computer keyboard ever manufactured (keeping in mind that "discover" means uncovering something that was there all along). I will probably pick up one of the 101s in a couple months. I'll also have to learn to shut the office door when using either IBM keyboard at 5:00 am…