The Tip-Ex key
Some keys on our keyboards have surprisingly juicy backstories. Take Delete. Have you ever wondered why it exists?
Today, it seems to just remove the character to the right of your cursor. Backspace takes care of what’s behind, Delete takes care of what’s ahead. Simple, right?
Not quite. The history of Delete isn’t about forward deletion at all. It’s about covering your tracks. It’s TipEx for punched cards. It’s regret made byte.
From Terminals to TipEx
Watch a real programmer—someone using vi, emacs, or some other terminal-based editor. Their cursor isn’t between characters, it’s on top of one. Press Delete, and that character vanishes. That’s Delete in its true form: brutal, final, direct.
In ASCII, every key has a number. a is 97, Backspace is 8… and Delete is 127. The very top of the 7-bit range. But why?
The Punched Card Era
Back when computers ran on punched cards, each card had 80 columns and 8 rows. Each column was a byte. Want to store a character? Punch holes for the right bits.
Now, imagine punching the wrong hole. Oops. TipEx? Nah. You’d punch all the bits in that column—turning it into 01111111, or 127. That’s right: Delete.
A column full of holes was a way to say, Forget this one. It’s garbage. It worked, because no matter what you were trying to encode, punching every bit was a universal way to ruin it.
Delete Became a Character
Of course, the computer needed to understand that this column meant “never mind.” So 127 became a control character: Delete. It shortened the line, but preserved your dignity.
Even today, when your text editor acts like Delete is just a polite cousin of Backspace, it’s actually carrying the legacy of punched regret.
Want to Feel Elite?
Remap your Backspace key to a left arrow. Then use Delete for what it was meant for: wiping away mistakes with terminal finality. Delete isn’t just a key. It’s history. It’s a whisper from a time when errors were physical and irreversible… unless you punched harder.
One bit to regret them all: 01111111.