Dean’s Message

Sylvia Plath on her typewriter

In Search of a Modern Tool

In the summer of 1889, Van Gogh used hand-crafted Dutch brushes to paint Starry Night. In the mid-1900s, Ansel Adams pioneered landscape photography with a Swedish-made Hasselblad camera. Later that century, Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar on her Italian Olivetti Lettera 22. When it comes to our careers, hobbies, and passions, we understand that the better the tool, the better the work. We need that finer brush, the higher pixel count, the sharper chisel. Anything less makes it seem as if we are doing the final product a disservice.

However, in today’s world where we interact most with touchscreens and wireless devices, we often overlook the need for such manual craftsmanship in favor of design and flashy visuals. We opt for form over function and as a result, we’ve completely left behind some of the best tools we could use for the work we do on a daily basis.

That’s where mechanical keyboards come in. If there’s any activity that is universal in this interconnected and digitally fluent world, it’s typing. We tweet, we game, we post, we email, we write - we do so much on our devices and don’t think twice about what exactly we’re typing on. We simply accept the keyboard that comes as part of the Macbook Pro or packaged with a Dell desktop. When personal computers were first popularized in the 80s and 90s, boards like the Model M were produced with as much care as the device itself, seen as the essential apparatus that allows us to interact with such revolutionary tech. Today, this important tool is mass produced with a quality that seems to fall each year.

Luckily enough, the trend towards mechanical keyboards has resurged in the last several years, with hundreds of thousands around the world partaking in the hobby’s growth. More and more of us are rediscovering this tool as an essential component in our 21st century lives and forums on Reddit and Geekhack are flourishing with a level of creativity not seen before. Renewed interest has brought about a new cycle of innovation. New designs, new materials, new colors, new components, and new ergonomics are providing new avenues to pursue a bespoke typing experience. This current community of enthusiasts and entrepreneurs believe in the development of this tool as a mainstay in the coming years.

That is why we’re excited to open the doors to Keyboard University, an ever-growing curriculum of resources and content tailored to introduce and expand on the world of mechanical keyboards. Over an array of courses, we’ll introduce the fundamentals of the industry and even provide resources for you to build your own boards and designs your own keysets. Our goal is to invite the next generation of newcomers into the hobby and inaugurate a growing community of prospective enthusiasts that are interested in their 1st or 100th mechanical keyboard.

We’ve got a lot planned for our students at Keyboard University:

  • Custom resources for those looking to build, design, and produce in the hobby

  • Rewards and extra credit to make entry into the hobby more accessible

  • Deeper content that builds out the world of mechs

If there’s any tool that you shouldn’t leave out of your arsenal today, it is undoubtedly a quality keyboard. From PC gaming to finishing this semester’s term paper, a good keyboard will help you get the job done with a great deal of other benefits. It is easier and better than ever to enroll in this hobby, and our hope is to provide the best resource to discover it all.

Welcome to Keyboard University!

Jason, Dean