It was created by Anatoly Vyatkin and installed on October 5, 2005 on the embankment of the Iset River in the city centre.[1][2]

The landmark depicts an IBM PC compatible Cyrillic computer keyboard at 30:1 scale (the area covered by the monument is 16 × 4 m), with 104 concrete keys. Each regular key weighs 180 pounds, while the space bar alone weighs 1,000 pounds.[3]

The keyboard attracts many visitors to the city and is today considered one of its top sights. It is also referred to as "one of the miracles of Russia" by some researchers.[4] Niklaus Wirth, Pascal programming language designer, evaluated the object while it was being constructed and found it to be fascinating.[5]

Keys F1, F2, F3, and Y were once stolen and in 2011 were rebuilt.[6]

In 2018, in the course of Russia FIFA World Cup New York Times newspaper published a long article about the object.[7]

In 2019 a survey by national search engine Yandex found that the Keyboard Monument was the second most searched monument among all of Russia's numerous famous monuments, the first being the Bronze Horseman and the third the Monument to Minin and Pozharsky.[8]

 

Yekaterinburg Sysadmin Day near Keyboard monument in 2011

In May 2019 it became known that the monument is facing threat of demolition. The nearby stairway was destroyed.[9]