Engelbart's Keyboard Available For Touchscreens

An anonymous reader writes "Doug Engelbart should be known to everyone on Slashdot — he did invent the mouse after all, among many other inventions all of us rely on today. There was one more obscure device he came up with that never really took off, though. It was called the Chorded Keyboard, and consisted of a system that allowed you to type using just one hand. The key to this system was finger combinations, which allowed up to 32 different characters — more than enough for the alphabet. Now that one-handed keyboard has been ported to work with touchscreens, and it could end up being quite popular. The key benefit is the fact you can type anywhere on the screen and don't even need to see where you are typing. The only difficulty is learning all the key combos, but once you have them cold you may be able to type faster than with two hands on your smartphone or tablet." Bonus: being software-only and open-source, it's much cheaper than a Twiddler.

Re:IIRC

[iamsquicky]

It was the quinkey or microwriter. Can remember playing with it but not for long enough to be interested.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter [wikipedia.org]

Re:IIRC

[belphegore]

I think the poster below is correct, it's a Microwriter AgendA. The picture at Wikipedia is of some other Microwriter device. This page has a picture of the AgendA:

http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/org.htm [gifford.co.uk]

My friend had one around the same time I had my Psion Organizer II, ~1989 or so in highschool in the UK.

Re:IIRC

[belphegore]

The picture at Wikipedia is of the Microwriter, not the Microwriter AgenaA. Try this page:

http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/org.htm [gifford.co.uk]

There's a picture on there under that name which is the device I remember -- the AgendA that is, not the Microwriter below it.

Re:EMACS?

[Samantha Wright]

Actually, at the time chorded keyboards were popular, the first Emacs users were already around, and took a much different approach. Gentlemen, behold: the Space Cadet Keyboard [wikipedia.org]. Seven modifier keys. Seven.

Re:Shoot me

[Grishnakh]

I don't think it'd be that hard to learn a chorded keyboard, but I've never tried so I'm not sure. However, there is a big difference between those and regular keyboards: with a regular keyboard, if you touch type, you're relying on positional memory. Every key is in a particular place, and never moves. Chorded keyboards don't have this; you get different characters through different motions of the keys, and you have to move multiple keys at once for each different character. Maybe it's not so easy.

That said, I don't see how this keyboard can possibly work if it only has 32 combinations, unless there's some extra modifier keys that you use with the other hand or something. Between lower-case, upper-case, numerals, special characters, and others (F-keys, insert/delete/home/etc.), you need a minimum of 84 keys to replace a standard 101-key keyboard, and a couple more if you want those stupid Windows keys.