soh@shiva.trl.oz (kam hung soh) (10/17/90)
This thread reminded me of an alternative keyboard for one-hand use. The keyboard had seven keys (I think) laid out in a semi-circle corresponding to the position of the fingertips of a splayed right hand. The thumb would be used to press one of two or three keys. Characters were entered by pressing keys that roughly corresponded to the shape of English letters. The keyboard was sold in Australia for about A$700.00, and included some memory. I guess because of the price, it didn't sell well. I wonder if it is the same as the Dutch invention Marcel mentioned. I also wonder if this is the same as some British invention in the late 70's which could also connect to a television for simple wordprocessing. Could anyone refer me to any article which has this keyboard and a bit of technical information about it? I've fiddled around with the idea for a while, but I couldn't deduce the mapping just from my finger positions. I tried to do a literary search, but I couldn't explain the idea to my librarian. What would "computer keyboards" be classified under? ------ Soh, Kam Hung email: h.soh@trl.oz.au tel: +61 03 541 6403 Telecom Research Laboratories, P.O. Box 249, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia
cohill@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Andrew M. Cohill) (10/17/90)
What everyone is talking about are called, in ergonomic circles, *chord* keyboards. The term is used because the keys are played like one plays chords on a piano; that is, you depress several keys at once. Although someone in the Netherlands may have marketed one, they certainly did not invent it. I do not have any references handy, but it would not be too hard to dig up a fair amount of human factors literature on them. Karl Kroemer, a human factors professor here, has been trying to develop an optimum design for several years, and has published some papers. There has never been any question that chord keyboards are much faster than QWERTY keyboards: I vaguely recall that a trained "chorder" can easily hit 200 wpm. The main obstacle to their use is that no one wants to buy a new input device and put in the training time needed to use it well--an economic roadblock, not an ergonomic one. -- | ...we have to look for routes of power our teachers never | imagined, or were encouraged to avoid. T. Pynchon |Andy Cohill |703/231-7855 cohill@vtserf.cc.vt.edu VPI&SU
carl@doctor.Tymnet.COM (Carl Baltrunas) (10/18/90)
I have one of the chord keyboards (if you want to call it a keyboard) that was
used on the augment system that Doug Engelbart worked on for Tymshare. I got
it as it was being thrown out along with a lot of other equipment when the
company was bought and then moved by McDonnell Douglas... anyway, it did
generate a single character based on what keys were pressed simultaneously.
My cube neighbor for 5 years used it and a mouse for programming and other
documentation work. He said it was SOOOOOO much better than QWERTY and it
was an integrated system. Nothing but praise for it... too I don't have the
terminal/interface it used, otherwise I could put it to use myself... maybe
I'll do that and make an ADB chord keyboard for the macintosh some day? :)
-Carl
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San Jose, CA 95161-9019 |(insert cute Macintosh quote here)russ@prism.gatech.EDU (Russell Shackelford) (10/18/90)
I believe that the 6-button keyboard designed for character input via "chording" was a co-development with the mouse, i.e., the mouse was originally designed as part of this 2-part system: a mouse in one hand to point, with the other hand handling all the text entry. It dates (I think) from the 60's, developed by somebody who gets credit for neither. As I recall, next entry is *not* all that quick this way, but the learning curve is faster. I don't have present access to the specifics, but I think learning was aided by mneumonics, i.e., certain features of the shape of the character remind one which combinations of fingers to use. russ -- Russell Shackelford The College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332 russ@prism.gatech.edu (404) 834-4759