(OT) Trivia - Why do/can keyboards 'click'? [Archive]

happyheathen

10-05-2001, 06:34 PM

Hint:

this feature pre-date the PC (in other words, existed on REAL (mainframe) machines before motorola produced either the 8086 OR 8088 chips...

happyheathen

10-06-2001, 06:45 PM

God, we are lazy...

OK - one of the first industries automated was the newspaper biz - 100's of typewriters clacking all day and night (rewrite!), wastebaskets overflowing with scraps of paper...

to say wordprocessing was worth the price of a mainframe was an understatement but...

the old newsies were absolutely unnerved by the silence!

so, IBM put a little switch on the bottom of the keyboards to cause a typewrite-style 'click' to make the folks happy...