Originally Posted by
daedalus
Does anyone know why this utterly stupid key even exists?
If you were taught to type properly on a typewriter you would have been trained in the use of the SHIFT LOCK key, which was seriously useful when wanting to type more than about one word in capitals.
The CAPS LOCK key on computer keyboards was someone's idea of trying to be clever, and emulate the SHIFT LOCK key to get letters to be typed as capitals
without also getting the numbers to be typed as !"£$%^&*(), as happened on typewriters with SHIFT LOCK.
Once upon a time (in the early 1980s) I was of the opinion that this clever clogs had got it wrong and that a proper SHIFT LOCK key on a computer keyboard would have been better ... but I can't remember now why I thought that.