KBK update for Friday, 25th December

There are currently two candidates for the world’s first “intelligent keyboard”. This term was used by both Micro Switch for their 103SD24-1, advertised in October 1977, and IMSAI for their IKB-1. An “intelligent keyboard” referred to a keyboard that used a “microprocessor” (specifically, a microcontroller) as its encoder implementation instead of a plain encoder circuit (in TTL or LSI). The date of introduction for the IKB-1 is not clear, but the circuit diagrams date back to June 1977, making it contemporary with Micro Switch’s offering. The IKB-1 even implemented dynamic key swapping, although with no non-volatile storage, the remaps would be forgotten when the keyboard lost power.

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