Chiclet Keyboard with Printed Keycaps

[Image: Picture of normal chiclet keyboard on top, chiclet keyboard with printed keycaps on bottom]

The PCjr's first keyboard had keys that looked like pieces of Chiclets gum. It had several other notable characteristics:

• Wireless, using infrared. (This was the first wireless computer keyboard as far as I know.) It could also be connected with a cable.

• Rubber dome key mechanisms.

• No function keys or numeric keypad. You need to press the Fn key before pressing a number to get the corresponding function. You also need to use the Fn key for Page Up, Page Down, etc. Annoyingly for a DOS machine, you also need to use the Alt key to get a backslash.

• Intended for use with overlays. The reason for the chiclet keys was to make room for paper overlays, which would come with software packages to show users which keys did what. (You could also buy blank overlays to write on yourself.) For example, King's Quest, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and HomeWord all came with overlays. It had blank keycaps, which allowed overlays and software to completely redefine the key meanings if desired.

Bearing this last point in mind, notice what's different about this specimen: it has characters printed on the keycaps instead of on the keyboard surface. The keyboard has an IBM logo and a serial number on the back, so perhaps it's not a prototype. All the IBM literature I've ever seen, however, even from the beginning, shows no printing on the chiclet keycaps. And the part number isn't a normal IBM part number.

The normal chiclet keyboard's numbers:

next page: Full-size Chiclet Keyboard

txti