Much about the keyboard is based on old and often obsolete (out of date) technology. To understand, look at an old-style typewriter:
First, you roll a piece of paper around a long cylinder called the "carriage." In front of the carriage is an ink ribbon. In the middle is a target zone.
When you press a button (sometimes called a "key"), a long metal bar (also called a "key" or a "lever") strikes upward toward the center, to the target zone. At the end of each key is a raised metal character (for example, the lowercase letter "a"). The end of the key hits the ribbon and the paper, creating the typed character on the paper.
After the character has been typed, the carriage moves a small amount to the left. This is because the target zone is always in the same place; if the paper did not move either, then all the letters would type in the same place on the paper.
When a typist reached the end of the paper, the carriage would be "returned" to the right side. This was called "carriage return."
First, the buttons you press are still called "keys." This goes back to the name for the long metal levers that struck the ribbon and paper, because they looked like old-fashioned keys:
That's why all the buttons are called a "keyboard."
The "Enter" key on your keyboard is sometimes given the label "return," which is from the old "carriage return." (Mostly this is seen on Macintosh keyboards; most Windows keyboards have an "Enter" key.)
The "shift" key is also borrowed vocabulary from the old typewriters. Each "key" or "lever" on an old typewriter had an uppercase and a lowercase imprint at the end. In order to change from one to the other, you would hit the "shift" key. In English, "shift" means "to move slightly." The whole set of keys would move slightly up or down, and so instead of the bottom imprint hitting the ribbon and paper, the top one would.
You may have wondered why the letters on a keyboard are arranged the way that they are. The keyboard layout that most people use is called "QWERTY," after the first six keys on the top line of letters. Many people believe that this arrangement helps you type faster.
Actually, the opposite is true! The QWERTY layout actually makes you type more slowly! This is because, in old typewriters, if you typed too quickly, then the keys would strike each other, and would often stick together in a "key jam."
This would cause a lot of trouble, and sometimes would ruin the document. So the QWERTY layout qwas designed to make it more difficult for the keys to hit each other. However, it also made it more difficult to type quickly.
So, why do we still use QWERTY? Because most people are trained to use it, and because most keyboards are made with that layout. It would be too expensive and troublesome to re-train all typists and to replace all the keyboards with new ones.
However, there is a better keyboard layout: DVORAK. DVORAK is arranged to make typing as fast as possible.
The world may soon change to DVORAK, however. First, computers can easily switch between keyboard layouts. And second, keyboards may soon see a big change: each key may have its own little LCD or OLED display. This means that each key could change appearance easily. There is already a keyboard like this on sale: the Optimus keyboard. However, it costs about $1500, but as with all new technology, prices will drop. The LCD keyboard will make it easy to switch from QWERTY to DVORAK. Your children might grow up using a different keyboard than you use.
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