Marcin Wichary on the evolution of the keyboard
The O’Reilly Hardware Podcast: How computer keys got where they are.
Hammond Model 1B typewriter from a Saskatoon newspaper around 1910, shot at Western Development Museum, Saskatoon, Canada. (source: By trekphiler on Wikimedia Commons)
In this episode of the Hardware Podcast, we talk with Marcin Wichary, design lead and typographer at Medium. Wichary is an authority on the history of keyboards, and he’s traced their development from an early period of enormous variation (when each manufacturer arranged arrow keys in a different order) through today’s relative stability.
Links:
Learn faster. Dig deeper. See farther.
Wichary’s favorite typeface is the Toronto subway typeface.
Tools: Wichary uses the DEVONthink document management system
This week’s click spirals:
David Cranor: The “2100 Animated Mechanical Mechanisms” YouTube channel, which presents 3D renderings of basic mechanical devices
Jon Bruner: The development of the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression algorithm, which is used in GIF images and was patented until recently
Marcin Wichary: Nathan Rabin’s A.V. Club series “My World of Flops,” which analyzes failed projects with a combination of humor and empathy, providing “an interesting way to talk about something that failed,” says Wichary.