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geekhack Community => Ergonomics => Topic started by: jacobolus on Thu, 02 October 2014, 02:51:17

Title: Ergonomic keyboard, 1896
Post by: jacobolus on Thu, 02 October 2014, 02:51:17

(http://i.imgur.com/qn7Q8SQ.png)
https://www.google.com/patents/US556422

Check out those index finger spacebars.

Title: Re: Ergonomic keyboard, 1896
Post by: Oobly on Thu, 02 October 2014, 04:33:52

Consecutive vowels look like they'd be a problem, but an interesting concept.

Title: Re: Ergonomic keyboard, 1896
Post by: jacobolus on Thu, 02 October 2014, 13:42:54

The inventor’s name is Polish looking, but with the ä, ö, ü, it looks like it might be for typing in German or something? Maybe there aren’t too many other consecutive vowels to worry about, or maybe only ones on opposite thumbs?

Title: Re: Ergonomic keyboard, 1896
Post by: davkol on Thu, 02 October 2014, 16:13:14

German (although geographically in modern Poland), see his brother Felix at Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_von_Kunowski).

I'm no expert on historical German (except I took some classes about Switzerdeutsch), but E with something is rare nowadays, unless used as transliteration of umlauted vowels (e.g., ae for ä) .

Title: Re: Ergonomic keyboard, 1896
Post by: engicoder on Thu, 02 October 2014, 17:34:48

Its amazing how succint and readable the text of this patent is compared to those of today.

Title: Re: Ergonomic keyboard, 1896
Post by: jacobolus on Thu, 02 October 2014, 18:50:15

I’ve found most of the keyboard related patents I look at, even ones from the last 10 years, to be pretty readable. I agree though that, for instance, software patents tend to be written in awful style.

(Maybe anyone who deals with both software APIs and legal codes inevitably ends up with a completely scrambled mind? Just one or the other is bad enough alone...)

Title: Re: Ergonomic keyboard, 1896
Post by: yasuo on Thu, 02 October 2014, 22:48:44

many ergonomic keyboard decades ago but qwerty win the market :))