double bucky (idea)

double bucky adj.

Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."

This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and was later taken up by users of the space-cadet keyboard at MIT. A typical MIT comment was that the Stanford bucky bits (control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of them; you could type only 512 different characters on a Stanford keyboard. An obvious way to address this was simply to add more shifting keys, and this was eventually done; but a keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the keyboard. It was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting keys be implemented as pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be very much like playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned in a parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called "Rubber Duckie", which was published in "The Sesame Street Songbook" (Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN 0-671-21036-X). These lyrics were written on May 27, 1978, in celebration of the Stanford keyboard:

			Double Bucky

	Double bucky, you're the one!
	You make my keyboard lots of fun.
	    Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
	(Vo-vo-de-o!)
	Control and meta, side by side,
	Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
	    Double bucky!  Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
		Oh,
		I sure wish that I
		Had a couple of
		    Bits more!
		Perhaps a
		Set of pedals to
		Make the number of
		    Bits four:
		Double double bucky!
	Double bucky, left and right
	OR'd together, outta sight!
	    Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
	    Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
	    Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!

	--- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)

[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer filk --ESR] See also meta bit, cokebottle, and quadruple bucky.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.