The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The `typewriter-paired' standard became universal, X4.14 was superseded by X4.23-1982, `bit-paired' hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
However, in countries without a long history of touch typing, the argument against the bit-paired keyboard layout was weak or nonexistent. As a result, the standard Japanese keyboard, used on PCs, Unix boxen etc. still has all of the !"#$%&'() characters above the numbers in the ASR-33 layout.
Node:
, Next:
, Previous:
, Up: