In computing, a keyboard is an input peripheral.
A keyboard is a device that presents all the keys of various devices, machines and instruments. Generally, the keyboard allows the control or command of the device in question.
Currently, the term is closely associated with the peripheral that allows data to be entered into a computer or other digital machine. When the user presses a key, the encrypted information is sent to the computer and the computer displays the character corresponding to the key on the screen.
computer keyboard
Computer keyboards have alphanumeric keys (letters and numbers), punctuation keys (period, comma, etc.) and special keys (that perform different functions, for example).
Among these special keys are, for example, those known as function keys, which are those that are located at the top of the keyboard and that allow us to directly access a series of programs or tools simply by themselves or by using them in combination with others.
And all this without forgetting the editing keys, which allow the computer user to carry out operations such as deleting text, moving through pages and documents quickly or inserting various elements. In this case, these keys include Home, Delete, End or Page Down.
The direction keys, the four that have arrows represented, are also equally important on any computer. As their name indicates, they are the ones that give us the opportunity to move left, right, down or up through the document we have open as well as the web page we are consulting.
Key combination and layout
In addition to all the above, we have to emphasize that the keyboard gives us the opportunity to speed up tasks by combining the different keys that shape it. Thus, for example, the use of Ctrl + N allows us to make the selected word or phrase appear in bold while the joint use of the CTRL + G keys allows us to save the document that we have open and on which we are working. These are combinations that do not require us to use the drop-down menus of the different programs.
The most common keyboard layout is called QWERTY because of the first six letters that show the keys on the top row. This design was designed by the American Christopher Sholer in 1868 .
A keyboard can be a musical instrument .
The keyboard in music
In another sense, musical instruments that have, precisely, a keyboard are known as keyboards. When you press a key, the instrument produces a sound by acoustic, electronic or electromagnetic means. There are keyboards that allow the simultaneous execution of sounds to generate chords .
The person who has the knowledge to play these instruments is known as a keyboard player (in Spain ) or keyboardist (in Latin America ).
The piano , organ , harpsichord , and accordion are some of the most popular keyboard instruments in the world of music . The xylophone and marimba , for example, are instruments that have a configuration similar to keyboards, although they are not considered keyboard instruments.