ForumGarden

I have a query, if anyone's up to thinking for a moment.

Why are the typing buttons on a computer called keys?

I know what keys are when they open locks, but I can see no overlap whatever between that and the typing buttons. Why are they called that?

Would it have a link to piano keys ? The term "key" in that sense would be musical and the buttons of both, are keys.

Thats babble, I know but you might glean some sense from it

There's a discussion about this very subject here



Why are piano or keyboard keys called that? - Straight Dope Message Board



A few good points are made, especially the last post

That's an interesting discussion, it brings in the music side of "key" too.

The dual meaning of both key-to-unlock and lever-or-bar is there in the classical Latin "clavis" and comes down from that into English "key", according to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clavis - I suppose I could have looked before asking, but then there'd have been no thread.

And "key" as a lever to trigger a note in musical instruments takes us right up to the typing buttons on computers, typewriters using the exact same lever mechanism as a piano and the computer button having the same end result as the corresponding typewriter key, even though the lever mechanism has disappeared.

And I quite like the notion that the original key-to-unlock was a lever or bar inserted into a hole of the same shape, which eventually took on complications to keep other people's levers from opening the lock.

My confusion had been thinking the levers or bars were part of the lock itself rather than the key to open the lock. It's a pretty primitive lock that opens with just a lever or bar, I reckon. But the idea had to start somewhere.

Computer keyboard is a direct carry-over from typewriter keyboard.

http://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-history.html

And then you have the Florida Keys.

Not to mention quay.