Cherry (keyboards)

Cherry GmbH
Corporation
Industry Electronic switches
Computer hardware
Founded 1950s
Founder Walter Lorraine Cherry
Headquarters Auerbach i. d. Oberpf., Germany
Key people
 Manfred Schöttner (CEO)
Revenue 250 Mio. Euro (2007)
Number of employees
 3,100 (2007)
Website cherryamericas.com
www.cherry.de

Cherry GmbH (formerly Cherry Corporation) (stylized as CHERRY) is a German computer peripheral-device maker. The company has its roots in the United States and is headquartered in Germany.[1][2] It has additional offices in the United States, France, and China.[2] They also manufactured a large range of products including sensors, input devices and automotive modules until 2008, when Cherry was bought by ZF Friedrichshafen and renamed to ZF Electronics GmbH. ZF-Division Computer Input Devices was outsourced as Cherry GmbH in January 2016 and will continue to sell products under the Cherry brand.

A keyboard by Cherry
Production facility in Bayreuth

History

Cherry was founded by Walter Cherry in 1953 in the basement of a Highland Park, Illinois restaurant. With the passing of its founder, his son Peter took over the ownership of the organization. The company's headquarters were moved to Auerbach in der Oberpfalz, Germany in 1979. Cherry has manufactured keyboards since 1973[1], and claims to be the oldest keyboard manufacturer still in business.[3]

Cherry maintains production facilities in Europe (most notably in Bayreuth, Germany), Asia, and the Americas. All of its products are designed and developed at the company's headquarters in Auerbach in der Oberpfalz. It also has offices in the UK, Italy, France, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Australia and other locations, with distributors in most major countries.

In 2008, Cherry was bought by ZF Friedrichshafen AG and incorporated as the ZF Electronics GmbH Corporate Division. The Cherry brand continues to be used.

Among Cherry's widely known products are its line of MX and ML key switches that have been used in industrial electronics and Point Of Sale environments since their inception in the 1980s, and more recently (~2008) by numerous manufacturers of consumer PC keyboards.

Today, the Cherry brandname of ZF Electronics Corporation is used in four market divisions:

Cherry switches in consumer keyboards (circa mid 2016)

Cherry MX switches in an opened mechanical keyboard
Cherry MX switches — Cherry MX Blue closed (left) and Cherry MX Brown, opened (right).

Cherry MX switches were developed and patented in the early 1980s (U.S. Patent 4,467,160) and first marketed around 1985. In the consumer keyboard market, Cherry MX switches are often referenced by the color of the key stem—the part of the switch below the keycap that moves downward when pressed.[4] Most common Cherry MX switches are:

[*Cherry MX Grey Switches can be found in Linear, Tactile, and Clicky variants. They are distinguished by stem color, with Linear being darker than Tactile. The Clicky version is no longer made. It is debated as to whether is even clicks, since it is not listed as "click" switch by Cherry in their 1994 "Keymodule MX brochure", along with MX Whites, which are greased to reduce the click[5]. Given their use primarily in large keys like spacebars, the feel is selected to match that of the other keys on the board.]

Other types of Cherry MX switches, such Green and Grey, are used for larger keys (spacebar, Shift, Enter, etc.). The feel of Cherry MX green switches are often compared to that of the "buckling spring" switches on original IBM Model M keyboards.[6] Cherry switches have a lifespan of up to 50 million actuations, depending on switch type.[7]

The auditory and tactile nature of each switch, and the amount of force needed to actuate it, vary depending on the switch type:

Switch type Clicky Tactile Linear Actuation force Tactile force Product code
Cherry MX Speed (silver) No No Yes 0.45 N N/A MX1A-51xx
Cherry MX Black No No Yes 0.60 N N/A MX1A-11xx
Cherry MX Red No No Yes 0.45 N N/A MX1A-L1xx
Cherry MX Silent No No Yes 0.45 N N/A MX1A-L1Nx
Cherry MX Nature White No No Yes 0.55 N N/A MX1A-41NA
Cherry MX Brown No Yes No 0.45 N 0.55 N MX1A-G1xx
Cherry MX Clear No Yes No 0.55 N 0.65 N MX1A-C1xx
Cherry MX Blue Yes Yes No 0.50 N 0.60 N MX1A-E1xx
Cherry MX White Yes Yes No 0.50 N / 0.70 N 0.60 N / 0.80 N MX1A-A1xx
Cherry MX Green Yes Yes No 0.70 N 0.80 N MX1A-F1xx

Awards

In 2008, Cherry's production facility in Bayreuth received the Bayerischer Qualitätspreis 2008 award.[8] At the end of 2006, Cherry received the Automotive Lean Production Award of the German economy magazine Automobil-Produktion. In 2005, Cherry GmbH in Auerbach received the Industrial Excellence Award as best European industrial facility.

References

  1. 1 2 "About us". CHERRY Americas.
  2. 1 2 "Locations". CHERRY Americas.
  3. ↑ cherry.de - Über Cherry
  4. ↑ "Cherry MX". Deskthority wiki. 2013-09-06. Retrieved 2013-09-11.
  5. ↑ "Cherry MX Click Grey - Deskthority wiki". deskthority.net. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
  6. ↑ Kowaliski, Cyril (2013-03-07). "A first look at Cherry's MX green key switches - Eat your heart out, buckling springs". techreport.com. Retrieved 2014-01-07. In both feel and specifications, though, the greens are closer to the buckling spring switches of IBM's iconic Model M keyboards. That makes them uniquely appealing to old-school geeks.
  7. ↑ "Cherry MX". deskthority.net. 2014-06-05. Retrieved 2014-06-05. Long life 20–50 million operations (depending on switch variant)
  8. ↑ Bayerischer Qualitätspreis 2008 Archived 2014-04-13 at the Wayback Machine. (german)
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