2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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space-cadet keyboard
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. A now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines, which inspired several
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still-current jargon terms and influenced the design of EMACS. It was
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equipped with no fewer than seven shift keys: four keys for bucky bits (
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control , meta , hyper , and super ) and three regular shift keys, called
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shift , top , and front. Many keys had three symbols on them: a letter and a
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symbol on the top, and a Greek letter on the front. For example, the L key
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had an L and a two-way arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the
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front. By pressing this key with the right hand while playing an appropriate
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chord with the left hand on the shift keys, you could get the following
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results: L lowercase l shift-L uppercase L front-L front-shift-L top-L
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(front and shift are ignored) And of course each of these might also be
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typed with any combination of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On
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this keyboard, you could type over 8000 different characters! This allowed
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the user to type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have
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thousands of single-character commands at his disposal. The keyboard of the
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Symbolics Lisp machine was a simplified version, lacking Top and Front keys,
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that could only send about 2000 characters. Many hackers were actually
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willing to memorize the command meanings of that many characters if it
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reduced typing time (this attitude obviously shaped the interface of EMACS).
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Other hackers, however, thought having that many bucky bits was overkill,
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and objected that such a keyboard can require three or four hands to
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operate. See bucky bits , cokebottle , double bucky , meta bit , quadruple
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bucky. Simplified Symbolics version of the space-cadet keyboard (Some
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relatively bad photographs of the earlier, more elaborate version are
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available on the Web.). Note: early versions of this entry incorrectly
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identified the space-cadet keyboard with the Knight keyboard. Though both
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were designed by Tom Knight, the latter term was properly applied only to a
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keyboard used for ITS on the PDP-10 and modeled on the Stanford keyboard (as
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described under bucky bits ). The true space-cadet keyboard evolved from the
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first Knight keyboard. An early space-cadet keyboard (The next cartoon in
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the Crunchly saga is 73-05-20. The previous one is 73-05-18.
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