Insanely Great

From: Hotze <photze_at_batelco.com.bh>
Date: Fri May 29 22:13:22 1998

>>2)It mentioned a "new input device" that was before the Xerox machine,
>>to be used alongside the mouse, was flexible but required training.
>>What was it?
>
>Doug Engelbart designed a five-key keyboard that would do most of seven-bit
>ASCII by accepting chording combinations. His idea was that you'd always
>run the keyboard with one hand and the mouse with the other.


Sounds cool, but hard to use, especially in a time when to use a computer,
you needed to type at least 30-50WPM (WAM), and spent enough time on a
computer to compute in your sleep!!! That kind of typing can't be easy to
forget.
    I recently saw a one-handed keyboard, which looked kinda like a MS
Natural Keyboard, with the right hand sawed off, and the numeric keypad next
to the left. It looked like there were a few extra keys, but you had a key
that you held down, kinda like shift, and it would make the oposite
character (like A for H, S for J, etc.)
    Ciao,

Tim D. Hotze
Received on Fri May 29 1998 - 22:13:22 BST