Meta key

It first appeared on the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) keyboard in 1970.

[citation needed] Generally, the Meta key worked similar to Macintosh's Command key, in that when held down it modified letters and symbols into immediate commands (shortcuts).

All these keys produced shortcuts (24-1 of them for every letter), but the Control ones were easiest to type and most popular, and the Meta ones second-easiest and thus second most popular.

However, on most modern keyboards, the Control key is farthest from the space bar, reversing the convenience of shortcuts.

[3] However, software often provides another workaround, such as using the Alt key (which does not exist on the Knight keyboard), or using the Esc key as a prefix (e.g., in Emacs).