Keyboards are one of those things that at a certain point someone got so right that everyone else more or less stopped messing with it.

It's like smartphone displays. Someone (and I'm not going to get into the argument of who exactly this was), came along and cracked the formula for how multi-touch displays should work, and almost everyone has followed the same design principals ever since.

When it comes to keyboards we might see a bit of variation when it comes to laptops trying to cram a few more buttons into the right-hand side, but otherwise nowadays their layouts are more or less standardised.

You have a standard layout of keys, a couple of function buttons here and there, and aside from arguments about whether rubber-dome or mechanical switches are better, everyone's on the same page about how they should work.

This wasn't always the case though. Before we settled upon today's standard layout, numerous companies tried their hand at establishing the industry standard. Some were successful, while others were far from perfect.

So read on for our list of the worst keyboards ever made, ranging from great computers with awful keys, to machines whose awful boards were completely in keeping with the quality of the computer itself (hello Mattel Aquarius).

We've even chucked a couple of more modern keyboards on this list in good measure, as proof that whatever happens there'll always be someone out there who wants to reinvent the wheel.