In December 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart introduced the world to two brand-new computer peripherals
of his own invention.The first was his invention,
the computer mouse -- which, as you're well aware, revolutionized user input two decades later. The second, the chorded keyboard, still has yet to take off outside the
Braille community. But after forty years, Doug Engelbart hasn't given up on the latter device; he recently commissioned an industrial designer, Erik Campbell, to modernize the antiquated keyset into this lovely jellyfish-inspired, five-fingered keyboard replacement. Made of silicon rubber and recycled plastics, the concept peripheral uses pressure-sensitive pads at each fingertip to detect key-presses, turns combinations of presses (the "chords") into letters and words, and sends them over wireless USB to the host computer. Sure, chorded computing isn't for everyone (else we'd all be sporting
iFrogs and
typing gloves), but if this concept ever comes to fruition, we just might be tempted to learn.
Update: Though Doug Engelbart brought us the computer mouse, he did not invent the chorded keyboard, merely demonstrated it at the same 1968 event. Thanks, MAS!
[Thanks, Semfifty]
posted March 29th 2010 6:05AM
Should have painted it green. Could have called it the Rutan™ Keyboard then. Doctor Who fans would have bought them by the millions.
iFrogs???? Is this for Kermit or the French?
You folks must spend a lot of time walking around in a daze, considering how many products you describe as "stunning".
I thought it was only infants who are irresistibly drawn to bright colors and odd shapes.
@Zhuzhu Seriously. This looks like someone who recently learned a surface modeling program and hadn't yet bothered learning about human factors and ergonomics.
Chordic keyboards aren't new, and there have been recent attempts to modernize them, such as the Twiddler (http://www.handykey.com/), but they have neer managed to grow in popularity. While they may be faster to type with, there is a much steeper learning curve and they require good finger coordination: this tends to put most people off trying them.
@nimblesquirrel
Are they faster? I'd like to see. I can push around 120wpm in optimum conditions (including errors, but retyping something I had previously written so it's already kind of in my head), and have no problem cruising at 80-90 in everyday typing.
If a chorded keyboard is just used to form letters, it seems slower because you have to devote your attention to each individual letter, while a conventional keyboard allows you to have one letter follow the other in very rapid succession.
But allowing for commonly used words or word parts might make this faster than a convention keyboard.
@UnixSystemsEngineer
Sure you can push 120wpm and cruise at 80-90wpm, but I highly doubt you can do that one-handed.
Is this anything like the thing which is featured near the beginning in 'Gizmo!'?
That might be something else - it was a breathy-sounding voice generating thingy - they were making it emphasise different words in the sentence "she saw me"...
(Pssst if you've not seen Gizmo! it's a must-see, some bloke in youtube called gizmofan has uploaded the whole thing, I hope one day it'll turn up on DVD)
Time and money would be better spent to improve speech recognition software. Especially for people with heavy accents.
Till then i'll stick to a keyboard.
@KGB
I'd rather type than be in an office full of people talking to their computers. Frankly, for most purposes, I can probably type faster/fast enough anyway.
But I could see how bloggers and writers and others who produce a ton of human-readable content would find an advantage with speech recognition.
Chorded keyboards are fine in theory, but only for something like hardcore word processing. You can forget them for things like computer gaming where you often need to press multiple keys simultaneously for proper control.
This would be most useful on smaller devices, like phones. But the people who would use them the most aren't capable of learning something like this.
@cc3d There is in fact a chorded keyboard app for the iPhone, based on Engelbart's design... A nice way for any geek to try it for himself at very little cost. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=351162406&mt=8
@JeanMichel Decombe Thanks, but it would have to be integrated with the iPhone o/s to be worth $4.99. I've seen how the alternate input apps work on the iphone and no matter how good the app is, there has to be some funky method of getting the text where you want it. Apple needs to open up the SDK for alternative input devices to replace the built in touch keyboard.
Douglas C. Engelbart did not invent the chorded keyboard (he introduced it to computers), and it is not only used in the "Braille community". (Has anyone seen a Stenotype machine? How about captioning of live tv broadcasts?)
There are examples of chorded keyboards for text as far back as 1874 as part of a telegraph system. Mr. Engelbart was born in 1925.
A small form factor chorded keyboard as part of an ulta compact device with a heads-up display could be a compelling system.
I hope they make a chordless version...
That is one creepy f*ing hand.
Oh crap, there goes my invention down the drain... Looks like this guy beat me to it, but I'm glad I didn't spend money for patent research...