My experience was at the opposite end. I first learned emacs on a Lisp Machine, using the so-called space-cadet keyboard. (ctrl-meta-hyper-super-cokebottle!). But it didn't have a single Help key....
I remember walking by the Lisp Machine company's office when I went from MIT towards Hahvahd Square (often to go to the arcade up there). They had a big cons cell as a logo on the front of the building. Alas, I never got to play with one, and I've only seen photos of the legendary keyboard.
I learned Emacs on a Tops-20 timesharing system running on a PDP-10. I think it was also available for Multics (predecessor to Unix). The PDP-10 had a 36-bit word and was NOT byte-based. Characters were often stored as 4 9-bit values to a word, so it was natural to store extra "bucky" bits like Ctrl and Meta in the extra bits.
