The name ‘Caps Lock’ also comes from old typewriters, where you could mechanically lock the Shift key with a lever. If you press this key, the function of the Shift key is activated until you press Caps Lock again. Directly above the Shift key, there is a Caps Lock key. You do not need to hold down the Shift key to type long sections of text in capital letters. When the carriage shifted up, the uppercase letter struck the ribbon instead of the lowercase letter. Each type hammer had an uppercase and a lowercase character, one above the other.
This would cause the type hammer to strike the ribbon and the paper at a different point.
Originally, when you held down the Shift key on a typewriter, the carriage holding the roller and the paper would ‘shift’ upwards by about a half an inch. The term ‘Shift’ dates back to the days of mechanical typewriters.
