Knight keyboard

The Knight keyboard, designed by Tom Knight, was used with the MIT-AI lab's bitmapped display system.^[1] It was a precursor to the space-cadet keyboard and the later Symbolics keyboard.

A Novena computer being used with a Knight keyboard

Influence

The Knight keyboard is notable for its influence on Emacs keybindings, particularly for helping popularize the meta key, which originated with the Stanford keyboard.^[2] The layout is also noteworthy: the meta key was outside the control key, which is opposite from the layout used on most modern keyboards, dating to the Model M IBM PC keyboard, which uses the Alt key instead, and places it inward to the control key.^[3]