A Handful of 1980’s Cherry Catalogues
Much like with my short from Christmas Eve of 2024 titled ‘An Interesting Marquardt Switch Find’, this article too has been held up by me being a touch lazy and simply not getting around to scanning all of the documents linked below. A handful of months ago I had an opportunity to buy what I thought was one, very colorful and thick looking Cherry Keyboards part catalogue on EBay for a not too unreasonable price and so I absolutely jumped on the opportunity. One week and a tracking number later, it turned out this catalogue was not just one but rather four separate catalogues – each showing off unique and interesting pieces of Cherry keyboard history that were an absolute treat to look through. Dated from the early 1980s, these catalogues predate Cherry’s iconic MX platform but fall right in line with the introduction of their “gold crosspoint” technology when it comes to their M4, M5, and M6 line of switches. In fact, Pages 24-26 of the KB79-2 Catalogue in particular mentions this technological advance by Cherry and shows a whole slew of technical details, diagrams, and part numbers that is more than worth the look through. Much like with the Marquardt catalogue that I uploaded, there won’t be much more exposition on this all as I think these documents are more than capable of speaking for themselves. My apologies if the scan quality isn’t the best on them and/or you see my finger on a couple of the pages as the brochures didn’t exactly want to sit flat in some places. Without further droning on, I hope you enjoy a look through each of the following Cherry catalogues that I spent many hours looking at myself. Please click on their hyperlinks in grey to bring up the PDF scan in a separate window:
Cherry Keyboards and Keyboard Switches Price List No. KB-801
- Dated January 2nd of 1980, this contains a list of pricing by part number for various “Gold Crosspoint” keyboards and switches as well as a list of sales representatives and authorized dealers for Cherry technology back in the day.
Cherry ‘Meet The Pro’ PRO-977-2 Keyboard Marketing Brochure
- Assumedly from roughly the same point in time, this brief brochure covers the special features and highly technical concepts that underly Cherry’s standalone hobbyist ‘PRO’ computer keyboard
Cherry Solid State Keyboard How To Book of Application Data SS-835
- A slightly longer technically heavy look at Cherry’s solid state keyboard design and the functionality and mechanisms underpinning their operation.
Cherry’s Full KB79-2 Catalogue
- A 36 page catalogue featuring Cherry keyboards, switches, and keycaps and associated diagrams and details for such. This is the one which has the interesting pages about Cherry’s gold crosspoint technology on Pages 24-26.
Figure 1: Honestly a bit crazy to think that keyboard switch technology like this is beyond 50 years old at this point…