What is the "Scroll Lock" button on the keyboard for?

I was interested after you made this topic, so I looked it up:

[quote]
Dear Straight Dope:

Why does my computer keyboard have this "Scroll Lock" key that seems to serve no purpose whatsoever? In 15 years I don't remember ever pushing that button. I'm almost scared to touch it --Insanegrey, Lawrence, KS

Guest contributor Una Persson replies:

Although your mother told you that there are many things to avoid touching (like downed electric lines, scorpions, and the "naughty place"), don't be afraid to touch the Scroll Lock key. Nothing bad will happen – in fact, probably nothing at all will happen. Once upon a time, however, something did.

The Scroll Lock key has appeared on the keyboards of IBM personal computers since the original 83-key PC/XT and the 84-key AT layouts, and remains on the 101-key and greater "enhanced" keyboards currently in use. The Scroll Lock key wasn't on the original Macintosh keyboards but appears on the Mac's "enhanced" keyboard.

The main intent of the Scroll Lock key was to allow scrolling of screen text up, down and presumably sideways using the arrow keys in the days before large displays and graphical scroll bars. You can see where this might have been handy in the DOS era, when screen output typically was limited to 80 characters wide by 25 rows deep. For some types of programs, spreadsheets being the obvious example, it's still handy now. In Microsoft Excel, Scroll Lock allows you to scroll a spreadsheet with the arrow keys without moving the active cell pointer from the currently highlighted cell. In Quattro Pro, another spreadsheet program, Scroll Lock works in a similar manner, although in contrast to Excel it's not possible to scroll the active cell pointer completely off the screen.

Other programs use Scroll Lock for special functions. It's said (although I haven't personally verified this) that the Linux operating system as well as some early mainframe and minicomputer terminals employed Scroll Lock to stop text from scrolling on your screen in command-line sessions – pausing the scrolling, in effect. The ancient DOS adventure game “Rogueâ€

.. I've actually kind of been wondering that myself.

Thanks for finding the answer, good sir.

interesting to know!

I for one was content with turning the light on and off.

i dunno either.

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Its like sticky keys, totally useless in our modern society... but still there.

its some kind of button thats plotting to overthrow the human species and unleash a dealy program to create human like computer clones that will feast on our fleash like a 500 pound asian man in his underwear singing "toxic" while jiggling in the public streets of new york while our flesh is being eaten.