CentralNotice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search "Butterfly keyboard" redirects here. It is not to be confused with scissor-switch keyboards . IBM ThinkPad 701 The TrackWrite , also known as the butterfly keyboard , is a foldout laptop computer keyboard designed by John Karidis for IBM as part of the ThinkPad 701 series, released in 1995. [1] It allowed the 701 series to be both compact (when closed) and comfortable to use (when open), despite being just 24.6 cm (9.7 in) wide with a 26.4 cm (10.4 in) VGA LCD . The 701 was the top selling laptop of 1995; [2] however, as later laptop models featured progressively larger screens, the need for a folding keyboard was eliminated. Consequently, no model but the 701 used the butterfly keyboard. The butterfly keyboard is split into two roughly triangular pieces that slide as the laptop's ...