80s computer keyboards

I hear social media video blogger repeat over and over that there was not a keyboard standard in the 70s and 80s for home computers. This unfortunately is true - kinda. There were really two loose standards. How do I know? First, I own quite a few computers from the 80s. It was IBM PC that broke the simi-standard and then redefined the overall standard by "winning" the PC wars.

So what was the standard layout before IBM changed it all?

First there is What I call Standard I - This was used by majority of the early 70-80s home computers

1) QWERTY keyboard like most type-writters

2) Specific characters associated with SHIFT and numbers

(Photo of a Commodore 64 keyboard)


(Photo of a Tandy CoCo 2 keyboard)

(Photo of an Atari 130XE keyboard)

Above the 1=!, 2=", 3=#, 4=$, 5=%, 6=&, 7=', 8=(, 9=)

Who adhered to this Standard I:
- Amstrad
- Apple I and II
- Atari (400, 800, 800XL, 130XE,  ect) - *Mostly*
- Commodore (vic 20, C64)

- Dragon
- Tandy (Coco, CoCo2, CoCo3)

Probably others were included.

Anyone that does retro programming on these systems knows it is an adjustment finding the quote above the '2' key.

Atari put a '@' with the 8 and shifted the '(' and ')' over one place.

Standard II
Who did not use Standard I? Apple. IBM, and Texas Instruments.

With the Apple IIe, Apple changed some keys around like the 2 key to be associated with @ like IBM and TI.

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A keyboard

With Standard II

1=!, 2=@, 3=#, 4=$, 5=%, 6=^, 7=, 8=*, 9=(, 0=)

Somehow people were swayed into believing the IBM PC was superior to the computers of the late 80s.  Really was not true, but perception often wins.   As PC clones became the norm, so did this keyboard layout.