On Sat, 1 Dec 2001, Charlie Allom wrote:

: er OK I found the large picture. duh. the control key is in the center
: like on my Sun keyboard. Who started this? Or who was the first to put
: the key somewhere else?

The Ctrl key has been next to the "A" on many computing machines through a
long history dating back to basic teletypes.

The two-Ctrl-keys-in-lower-outside-corners annoyance comes from the design
of the IBM AT "enhanced" keyboards (of the 10x-key variety).  The original
IBM PC and XT keyboards (84 keys) had Ctrl in the Right Place, as did some
early AT ones; all later "enhanced" keyboards had them off in never-never
land....

My uneducated guess is that it was made that way to help IBM Selectric
typewriter users migrate more easily to computer keyboards in a
word-processing environment.  Such typewriters had a Shift Lock (not Caps
Lock, mind you) key to the left of "A".

I rather liked Sun's compromise used on some Type 5 keyboards, with
standard-width ctrl *and* caps keys next to "A".

-- 
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