Keyboard Builders' Digest / Keyboard Spotting
Chornobyl Control Room 3
An intriguing keyboard layout: Console in Chornobyl Control Room 3 posted by Hunor_Deak.
Published September 30, 2022
Hunor_Deak shared this photo in the cassettefuturism subreddit.
Don't think too much about the ergonomics of the layout, it's a "mimic panel" or "mnemonic panel", representing the arrangement of the individual control rods.
Ofc I can't confirm this photo is really from Chernobyl and the time of taking the shot is also questionable as you'll see.
So at the time of the accident, three different colors marked the function of the channels on the display panel:
- White lamps: fuel channels
- Yellow lamps: fuel channels with power density probes
- Green lamps: control rod channels
Red colored indicators were introduced for indicating the state of fast scram rods after the Chernobyl accident. (source)
Since there are a lot of red "light covers" in the photo, it was probably taken later? I'm not an expert in this field.
As pointed out in the thread, the "ВЫВЕДЕНО ИЗ ЭКСПЛУАТАЦИИ" ("not in service") stickers in the background may make you uneasy in this context.
And here is a great story on one of the keycaps / light covers. Check out the video:
More info at ORAU Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity:
https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/accidents/light-cover-from-chernobyl.html
Published on Fri 30th Sep 2022. Featured in KBD #97 (source).
Related
Leeds & Northrup Max1
A cool control station terminal spotted by jacksonh22.
Otrona 2001
The Otrona 2001 is a cool and rare vintage computer from 1984. Posted by Cerb-r-us.
IBM System 32 5320
Wow! This beast is built into a desk and its "display" is a tractor feed printer. Shared by neetoday.
1983 IBM PCjr
1983 PCjr keyboard from IBM posted by rpiguy9907.