Anatomy of a Keyboard

Input devices like keyboards have a key role in the computing and gaming landscape, so the guts of them must be pretty cool to look at. Naturally, this means getting our scalpels out and sending them off to the operating table, for another dissection of the anatomy of hardware.

Just as we've seen with mice, keyboards range enormously in price these days. But they can be put into one of two very broad categories: membrane or mechanical. These terms refer to the system used to determine the key presses, and we'll start with the first one.