Why the Tab key is called Tab
Tab is short for tabulator — a mechanism for making tables. On a manual typewriter, lining up columns of numbers by hand was miserable, so machines added a lever that flung the carriage to preset stops in one motion. You set your “tab stops,” and one press jumped you cleanly to the next column. It was, for its era, a small miracle of alignment.
Software inherited the whole idea. That’s why pressing Tab in a form leaps you to the next field, why Tab indents code to a stop, and why “tab stops” still exist in your word processor with that exact name. The lever is gone; the jump to the next aligned position it created is now muscle memory for anyone who fills in a form.
Keyboard users lean on it hardest — Tab order is how you move through a page without a mouse, which is why a good build keeps that order sane. A 120-year-old lever quietly defines how accessible your interface is today.
The object died. The metaphor didn’t.
The object died
The mechanical tabulator lever is gone
The metaphor didn't
Tab still marches you field to field