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KBK update for Monday, 3rd May

One of the most frustrating companies to track down is Pye Electro-Devices, or PED. Various details exist on their keyboard products, but not a single confirmed photograph or example has shown up. This stands in sharp contrast to fellow British manufacturer Alphameric, from which we have discovered numerous examples to date. Like Alphameric, PED is now gone; some Alphameric staff still work for Devlin (who bought out their keyboard business), but are forbidden to speak, while with PED it’s not clear what became of the keyboard line of the business.

Although PED switches were used in some BBC Micro keyboards, the actual manufacturer of those keyboard assemblies is not confirmed. We do know that PED made the console panel for the Monarch 120 digital PABX, which is the first visually confirmed example of capacitance-controlled transistor sensing. The design here is different to that of Control Devices. This Monarch example may be PED’s Series 90, but this is not confirmed.

Those details that are still discoverable are now added to the PED page. The “PED switch” write-up remains on the same page for now, as none of the information available at present offers any suggestion of their identity, only that they appear to have been available for sale separately.

View within the updates for 2021

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