The beautiful noise of typing on a mechanical keyboard

As I am typing this I am an enjoying a magnificently anachronistic sound: clickety, clackety, click-clack, clickety, clack. My husband got me a mechanical keyboard for my birthday, and I love it already.

I may be typing a blog post, but if I close my eyes it sounds like I’m a reporter in a 1970s newsroom or an old school novelist.

hemingway at his typewriter
If my writing can’t sound as good as Hemingway’s at least my typing can.

I learned to type on a manual typewriter, and I’ve get a bit nostalgic for that feeling and that sound. My favorite segment of the Animatrix is the film noir piece “Detective Story,” which combines modern technological capabilities with 1940s aesthetics. One of my favorite details is that the computer is run with a keyboard that looks like a manual typewriter.

The Animatrix keyboard

My new keyboard doesn’t look like that. It looks much like a normal computer keyboard, as you can see here:

mechanical keyboard

But it sounds very much like this:
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/CwblSeIdi0s?rel=0

It’s a beautiful noise.

Mechanical keyboards have become quite popular for gamers. The keyboard my husband bought me is technically a gaming keyboard. It is called the Black Widow Ultimate. It has a lot of gaming-oriented hot key capabilities. The box says it is “By Gamers. For Gamers.”

I am not a gamer.

I do, however, love the clickety-clackety sound of my new mechanical keyboard. I may be inspired to write more just to hear it more.

Oh, and although the sounds of my mechanical keyboard may be classic, the backlighting is pure futurism.

mechanical keyboard lighted

Happy clickety-clackety birthday to me!

RELATED POST: Do they still teach typing in school?

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