Al said: > I had to fix a key on CHM's keyset today, so I shot a bunch of pictures while > it was apart > http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_5-Key_Keyset > > They spent a lot of money on this. There are two castings of the same > material as the keyboard > and monitors, and two injection molded parts for the keys and the four > spacers betwen the microswitches. > Al, that's fabulous! Thanks for providing some more insight into one of those input devices that fell by the wayside in the annals of human-computer interaction like the light pen, versawriter, space ball and others. I would think Xerox contracted out the design to a capable engineering firm, handed them a prototype and a pot of money and the instructions 'make a nice one of this, we want X of them please'.
Your pictures especially the internal details will really help in my drawings. I've started on Marc's photos, first thing I do is rotate the images to level them up, although so far they are only about a degree or two out which is pretty good for eyeballed shots. The next step is the image is loaded as a background layer in CAD then overdrawn with construction lines. Same for the plan and elevation, then they are brought together onto one drawing and stretched to fit eatch other. At least one of the three images will have a known length so at that point the whole drawing gets scaled to actual size. It's a slow process. Steve.
