> Even things like the use of ESC, and the overloading of ESC for the actual ESC key, for a signal for keycodes, and for the ALT/META key are crazy. It actuall

> Even things like the use of ESC, and the overloading of ESC for the actual ESC key, for a signal for keycodes, and for the ALT/META key are crazy. It actually happened the other way around. The escape character was originally only there as an escape character at the start of a control sequence. It was added to the keyboard back in the teletype era specifically so that the operator could control the behavior of the device on the other end. And it was labeled “Alt Mode”! See <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/TTY33ASR.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/TTY33ASR...>, though it is a little blurry.