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KBK update for Saturday, 3rd April

When I first encountered the idea of encoding switches—specifically Mechanical Enterprises Mercutronic and Micro Switch KB, it seemed like a pointless and short-lived notion. This was not helped by a misunderstanding of when KB encoding switches were introduced, now suggested to be 1964.

In reality, self-encoding was a fairly common technique, found thus far in conductive, capacitive, photoelectric and inductive forms. What makes them seem uncommon is their rarity: self-encoding keyboards are scarcely encountered, with known examples seemingly limited at this stage to photoelectric keyboards from Invac and Collimation.

Joining these ranks is another manufacturer whose products also remain undiscovered is Synergistics. Synergistics keyboards, obtained from the acquisition of Peripheral Equipment Corporation in 1968, use a semi-reconfigurable conductive implementation. Keys can be rearranged at will (albeit seemingly only by removing all keys to its right in the same row) but changing the encoding requires sourcing a replacement coding mat, the small insulating sheet with break-off tabs that determine which pairs of switch contacts are active. This approach, including seemingly a complete lack of any on-board circuitry besides the output buses (including the absence of an electrical monitor or its accompanying resistors) led to a keyboard deemed at the time to be very cost effective. Indeed, a 1969 selection of products on the market gave a $50 quantity price, the cheapest product listed by a wide margin. Mercutronics came in second place at $75, and all other offerings were priced at $100 or more.

View within the updates for 2021

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