Re: Discoloration of Apple II keyboards

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"trulore" <trulore@a2central.com.remove-h1x-this> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I collect and repair of old Apple II computers, mostly the II and II+.
>
>I've collected a few IIe computers, but one question has always bugged me:
>
>Why is the spacebar on old Apple IIe computers always discolored?  Look at any 
>old Apple IIe computer on eBay, and the spacebar is this gross discolored 
>shade of grey-yellow, even though the rest of the keys on keyboard are 
>original grey.  

    I've noticed this a decade and a half ago when I started collecting.
It isn't unique to the Apple IIe, I've seen space-bar discoloration 
affecting the Apple IIgs, Apple IIc, Apple IIc Plus and Macintosh 
keyboards.

    In fact when judging if I have a non-discolored machine on hand, 
I often use the color of the space-bar to gauge how close (or far off) 
from the original beige or platinum it is. 

>I don't think the Apple IIe originally had a spacebar that was a different 
>color than the rest of the keys, so this must be some odd effect of aging, and 
>the spacebar must be made of some material that doesn't age as well as the 
>rest of the keyboard.

    Factory shipped _all_ the keys were the same color. The change is
caused from exposure to UV-light (i.e. direct sun light mostly, though 
I've heard fluorescent lighting too).

>Does anyone have any ideas?  I've seen this on a few IIc computers as 
>well...all the keys are clean and bright and grey, and the spacebar alone is 
>horribly discolored.

    I thought the answer was quite obvious. The space-bar is the ONLY
key which doesn't have printing on it. Apple must have specially coated
the other keycaps with some chemical to prevent the printing from rubbing
out or fading over time. Have you ever seen faded print on an Apple made
keyboard? No. Typical PC keyboards, yes, and in those cases all the keys
get discolored, not just the spacebar.

    It Apple's coating (it chemical mixed with the plastic) was designed to
protect against finger oil, sweat and repeated friction; that the coating
also protected against UV lighting was probably an unintensional side 
effect. I often wished Apple coated the entire machine back then, then 
we'd probably still see light grey and beige systems out there rather
than the yellow-brown you all too often see today. Either it was too
expensive or they had no idea the plastic would discolor in that way 
(or knew it would, but figured by that time, people would buy new 
systems?).

Mitchell Spector