Knight keyboard

The Knight keyboard, designed by Tom Knight, was used with the MIT-AI lab's bitmapped display system.[1] It was a precursor to the space-cadet keyboard and the later Symbolics keyboard.

A Novena computer being used with a Knight keyboard

Influence

The Knight keyboard is notable for its influence on Emacs keybindings, particularly for helping popularize the meta key, which originated with the Stanford keyboard.[2] The layout is also noteworthy: the meta key was outside the control key, which is opposite from the layout used on most modern keyboards, dating to the Model M IBM PC keyboard, which uses the Alt key instead, and places it inside the control key.[3] This results in the Emacs pinky problem when Emacs is used on modern keyboards, which map alt to meta; one solution is to use key remapping to swap the control and alt keys.[4]

References
  1. The Knight keyboard.
  2. Raymond, Eric S.; Steele, Guy L. (1996). The New Hacker's Dictionary. MIT Press. p. 420. ISBN 9780262680929.
  3. Xah Lee. "History of Emacs ＆ vi Keys (Keyboard Influence on Keybinding Design)".
  4. Xah Lee. "How To Avoid The Emacs Pinky Problem". Retrieved 2009-11-08.


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