What is a mechanical keyboard anyway?

There appears to be some controversies about what is a mechanical keyboard over a few popular tech websites.  Some people hold a narrower definition while other accept a rather broad spectrum of what a mechanical keyboard is.  To be honest, it is a misnomer, as all physical switches are by definitions mechanical.  It is converting a directional physical moment to an electrical signal.  So, any conventional keyboard in reality is mechanical by nature, be a rubber dome, buckling spring, capacitance or even magnetic switches.  So, it’s moot to argue if a keyboard is mechanical or not as it was poorly named from the beginning.  However, this train has pretty much left the station and we are stuck with the terminology.

The working definition that I am using comes from Life Hacker: basically it is a keyboard where each key is an individual and independently functional switch.  In this working definition, if a key is defective, then only a single switch needs to be replaced while others are not affect.  So, instead of worrying about the underlying technology, it just states that a mechanical keyboard simply has an independent switch for each of the keys.  Thus, a standard rubber dome keyboard will not qualify because if the a rubber dome is bad, then the entire sheet is replaced.  That sheet contains a block of key switches.  However, a Topre switch which is constructed individually does qualify even though there’s no mechanically induced electrical short created by the switch.  It is a capacitance switch.  Thus, if a key’s rubber dome goes bad, only the key’s dome is replaced and not the whole block.

Therefore, using this definition, one can expect that mechanical keyboards to be more expansive because now there’s a switch for each key rather than a giant block of contacts.  Early keyboards were built with individual switches; for example IBM’s Model F.  Rubber dome technology allows a faster and cheaper production because instead of each switches are soldered, it’s now just a big sheet of contacts against a printer circuit board.  It goes from many moving parts down to just a few.  Therefore, keyboards are no longer expansive to make and computers in general become more affordable.  That’s a good thing in so many ways.