{"id":641758,"date":"2023-04-26T10:05:07","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T15:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/26\/shift-happens-writing-about-the-history-of-keyboards\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T10:05:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T15:05:07","slug":"shift-happens-writing-about-the-history-of-keyboards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/26\/shift-happens-writing-about-the-history-of-keyboards\/","title":{"rendered":"Shift happens: Writing about the history of keyboards"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After discovering that a history of keyboards\u2014 from typewriters to iPhones\u2014had yet to be written, designer and typographer Marcin Wichary got to work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/p>\n

\"Marcin<\/p>\n

<\/span>

Marcin Wichary and his
\nkeyboards. \u201cIt sounds
\nreally boring, right?\u201d he says. \u201cBut if you look at it throughout the ages
\n … it becomes a lot more
\ninteresting.\u201d<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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When the designer and typographer Marcin Wichary stumbled upon a tiny museum just outside Barcelona five years ago, the experience tipped his interest in the history of technology into an obsession with a very particular part of it: the keyboard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen so many typewriters under one roof. Not even close,\u201d he shared on Twitter at the time. \u201cAt this point, I literally have tears in my eyes. I\u2019m not kidding. This feels like a miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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He\u2019d had a revelation while wandering through the exhibit: Each key on a keyboard has its own stories. And these stories are not just about computing technology, but also about the people who designed, used, or otherwise interacted with the keyboards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take the backspace key, he explains: \u201cI like that [the concept of] backspace was originally just that\u2014a\u00a0space<\/em>\u00a0going\u00a0backward.<\/em>\u00a0We are used to it erasing now, but for a hundred years, erasing was its own incredibly complex endeavor. You needed to master a Comet eraser, or Wite-Out, or strange correction tapes, and possibly all of the above \u2026 or give up and start from scratch whenever you made a typo.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ergoLogic
Some of these keyboards are adjustable and others fixed. The ergoLogic FlexPro and the SafeType (below) eliminate pronation of the forearms as well as wrist extension.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"SafeType<\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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These days, even the cheapest desk keyboard is in some way \u201cergonomic,\u201d allowing for reduced effort and improved response compared with even the best of the mechanical and electric typewriters that preceded them. But some keyboards go further than most, rotating or tenting their respective halves to allow a less stressful hand and arm position.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Some keyboards enable communication between people who might find that difficult. Shown here are a simple keyboard connected to a singular Braille cell; a typewriter making it possible to print in Braille; and a machine that allowed people who are hard of hearing to type over telephone wires.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The deeper he researched, the more fixated he became. Amazed that no comprehensive book existed on the history of keyboards, he decided to create his own. When not working at his day job as design lead for the design software company Figma, he began producing Shift Happens<\/em>, a two-volume, 1,216-page hardcover book\u2014and raised over $750,000 for the project on Kickstarter in March of 2023. Wichary was only a bit surprised by the support and the keyboard\u2019s wide appeal. As he points out, \u201cIt\u2019s such a crucial device that occupies a lot of our waking life.\u201d<\/svg> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Allison Arieff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After discovering that a history of keyboards\u2014 from typewriters to iPhones\u2014had yet to be written, designer and typographer Marcin Wichary got to work.Marcin Wichary and his keyboards. \u201cIt sounds really boring, right?\u201d he says. \u201cBut if you look at it throughout the ages … it becomes a lot more interesting.\u201d When the designer and typographer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":641759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969,25837,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-641758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-happens","8":"category-shift","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}