the position of escape, Bill Joy was using an ADM-3A when he wrote vi and csh. Its keyboard layout is where the vi hjkl motion commands came from, and the shell abbreviation ~ for . It has ctrl in the correct location next to A, and esc next to Q. I don’t know of any classic keyboards with esc next to A.
Oh, wow! I never thought of that! Studying history is fascinating. It can explain quite many things. Especially the ones you think of as weird.
