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52-519: A chorded keyboard minus the board, typically designed to be used while held in the hand, is called a keyer . Douglas Engelbart introduced the chorded keyset as a computer interface in 1968 at what is often called " The Mother of All Demos ". Each key is mapped to a number and then can be mapped to a corresponding letter or command. By pressing two or more keys together the user can generate many combinations. In Engelbart's original mapping, he used five keys: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. The keys were mapped as follows:

104-426: A 'shift' key to allow both letters and numbers to be produced. With eleven keys in a 3/4/4 arrangement, 43 symbols could be arranged allowing for lowercase text, numbers and a modest number of punctuation symbols to be represented along with a 'shift' function for accessing uppercase letters. While this had the advantage of being usable by untrained users via ' hunt and peck ' typing and requiring one less key switch than

156-481: A 12-key chord keyboard from NewO Company, appeared in 1978 issues of ROM Magazine, an early microcomputer applications magazine. Another early commercial model was the six-button Microwriter , designed by Cy Endfield and Chris Rainey, and first sold in 1980. Microwriting is the system of chord keying and is based on a set of mnemonics. It was designed only for right-handed use. In 1982 the Octima 8 keys cord keyboard

208-452: A = 1, b = 2, c = 3, d = 4, and so on. If the user pressed keys 1 and 2 simultaneously, and then released the keys, 1 and 2 would be added to 3, and since C is the 3rd letter of the alphabet, and the letter "c" appeared. Unlike pressing a chord on a piano, the chord is recognized only after all the keys or mouse buttons are released. Since Engelbart introduced the keyset, several different designs have been developed based on similar concepts. As

260-401: A braille cell. The Perkins Brailler , first manufactured in 1951, uses a 6-key chord keyboard (plus a spacebar) to produce braille output, and has been very successful as a mass market affordable product. Braille, like Baudot, uses a number symbol and a shift symbol, which may be repeated for shift lock, to fit numbers and upper case into the 63 codes that 6 bits offer. After World War II, with

312-406: A chord keyboard was in the stenotype machine used by court reporters, which was invented in 1868 and is still in use. The output of the stenotype was originally a phonetic code that had to be transcribed later (usually by the same operator who produced the original output), rather than arbitrary text—automatic conversion software is now commonplace. In 1874, the five-bit Baudot telegraph code and

364-453: A chording keyboard to represent sounds: on the standard keyboard, the U represents the sound and word, 'you', and the three-key trigraph KAT represents the sound and word 'cat'. The stenotype keyboard is explicitly ordered: in KAT , K , on the left, is the starting sound. P , S , and T , which are common starting sounds and also common ending sounds, are available on both sides of

416-519: A conventional 12 button keypad, it had the disadvantage that some symbols required three times as much force to depress them as others which made it hard to achieve any speed with the device. That solution is still alive and proposed by Fastap and Unitap among others, and a commercial phone has been produced and promoted in Canada during 2006. Historically, the baudot and braille keyboards were standardized to some extent, but they are unable to replicate

468-530: A crude example, each finger might control one key which corresponds to one bit in a byte , so that using seven keys and seven fingers, one could enter any character in the ASCII set—if the user could remember the binary codes. Due to the small number of keys required, chording is easily adapted from a desktop to mobile environment. Practical devices generally use simpler chords for common characters ( e.g., Baudot ), or may have ways to make it easier to remember

520-428: A flat surface. Chording keyboards are also used as portable but two handed input devices for the visually impaired (either combined with a refreshable braille display or vocal synthesis). Such keyboards use a minimum of seven keys, where each key corresponds to an individual braille point, except one key which is used as a spacebar. In some applications, the spacebar is used to produce additional chords which enable

572-410: A matching 5-key chord keyboard was designed to be used with the operator forming the codes manually. The code is optimized for speed and low wear: chords were chosen so that the most common characters used the simplest chords. But telegraph operators were already using typewriters with QWERTY keyboards to "copy" received messages, and at the time it made more sense to build a typewriter that could generate

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624-501: A mnemonic system that enabled fast and easy touch type learning. Within a few hours the user could achieve a typing speed similar to hand writing speed. The unique design also gave a relief from hand stress (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) and allowed longer typing sessions than traditional keyboards. It was multi-lingual supporting English, German, French and Hebrew. The BAT is a 7-key hand-sized device from Infogrip, and has been sold since 1985. It provides one key for each finger and three for

676-439: A modern transmitter, which also functions as the electronic keyer. (Many modern electronic keyers and nearly all radio built-in keyers electrically detect whether the inserted plug belongs to an old type, single-switch key [monophonic plug], or a new type, double-switch key [stereo plug], and respond appropriately for the key that is wired to the inserted plug.) In a completely automated teleprinter or teletype ( RTTY ) system,

728-404: A series of correctly timed "dits" . The pendulum would repeatedly tap a switch contact for as long as its control lever was held to the right (or until the impulse from the thumb push was exhausted); telegraphers were obliged to time the "dahs" themselves, by pressing the lever to the left with their knuckle, one press per "dah". When the lever is released, springs push it back to center and break

780-471: A smaller, more portable form of user input device. Modern computer interface keyers typically have a large number of switches but not as many as a full-size keyboard ; typically between four and fifty. A keyer differs from a keyboard in the sense that it lacks a traditional "board"; the keys are arranged in a cluster which is often held in the hand. An example of a very simple keyer is a single telegraph key , which used for sending Morse code . In such

832-452: A traditional up-and-down "straight key". Historically appropriate old-fashioned keys are used by naval museums for public demonstrations and for re-enacting civil war events, as well as special radio contests arranged to promote the use of old-style telegraph keys. Because of the popularity of iambic keys, most transmitters introduced into the market within the current century have keyer electronics built-in, so an iambic key plugs directly into

884-427: A use, the term "to key" typically means to turn on and off a carrier wave . For example, it is said that one "keys the transmitter" by connecting some low-power stage of the amplifier in a transmitter to its follow-on stage, through the telegraph key. When this concept of an iambic telegraph key was introduced to inventor Steve Mann in the 1970s, he mistakenly heard iambic as bi ambic . He then generalized

936-429: Is Edgar Matias' Half-Qwerty keyboard described in patent US 5288158   circa 1992 that produces the letters of the missing half when the user simultaneously presses the space bar along with the mirror key. INTERCHI '93 published a study by Matias, MacKenzie and Buxton showing that people who have already learned to touch-type can quickly recover 50 to 70% of their two-handed typing speed. The loss contributes to

988-415: Is a chorded keyboard driver for Linux. With a configuration file, any joystick or gamepad can be turned into a chorded keyboard. This design philosophy was decided on to lower the cost of building devices, and in turn lower the entry barrier to becoming familiar with chorded keyboards. Macro keys, and multiple modes are also easily implemented with a user space driver. One minimal chordic keyboard example

1040-492: Is the CharaChorder One, which features a split design with each having access to 9 switches that can be moved in five directions (up, down, left, right, and pressed) in contrast to typical keyboards. This device allows for both chorded entry as well as traditional character entry. The set of words that can be chorded can be dynamically changed by the user in real time, but by default includes the 300 most common words in

1092-657: The English language. This chorded entry feature allows for potentially extremely fast typing speeds, so much so the founder of the company has been banned from online typing competitions. Additionally, they create the Charachorder Lite with a more traditional keyboard design. The manufacturer claimed that users of the Charachorder One can reach speeds of 300 words per minute, while users of the Charachorder Lite can reach 250 words per minute. The WriteHander,

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1144-584: The GKOS keypad driver for Linux as well as the Gkos library for the Atmel/ Arduino open-source board. Plover is a free, open-source, cross-platform program intended to bring real-time stenographic technology not just to stenographers, but also to hobbyists using anything from professional Stenotype machines to low-cost NKRO gaming keyboards. It is available for Linux , Windows , and macOS . Joy2chord

1196-793: The USA the Railway Mail Service used a Railway post office for sorting the mail. As of 2017, Germany has about 95–98 sorting offices across the country. The United Kingdom Royal Mail 's Mount Pleasant Sorting Office was the world's largest sorting office at the beginning of the 20th century but is now only the largest one in London. Military mail systems, such as the British Forces Post Office and U.S. Military Postal Service , have their own dedicated sorting offices. This postal system–related article

1248-538: The addressee, which may be a direct delivery or sent onwards to another regional or local sorting office, or to another postal administration. Most countries have many sorting offices; the USPS has about 275. Some small territories such as Tahiti have only one. Sorting vans were used at various times; the UK had sorting vans , or carriages, in their Travelling Post Offices but those services were terminated in 2004. while in

1300-455: The advent of solid state electronics, the convenience of fully automatic keying became possible by simulating and extending the operation of the old mechanical keys, and special-purpose side-to-side keys were made to operate the electronics, called iambic telegraph keys after the rhythm of telegraphy. In iambic telegraphy the "dot" and the "dash" are separate switches, activated either by one lever or by two separate levers. For as long as

1352-553: The alternate hand is used. It is otherwise a standard QWERTY keyboard of full size. It, and many other innovations in keyboard controls, were designed to deal with hand disabilities in particular. Sorting office A sorting office or processing and distribution center (P&DC; name used by the United States Postal Service (USPS) ) is any location where postal operators bring mail after collection for sorting into batches for delivery to

1404-510: The arrival of electronics for reading chords and looking in tables of "codes", the postal sorting offices started to research chordic solutions to be able to employ people other than trained and expensive typists. In 1954, an important concept was discovered: chordic production is easier to master when the production is done at the release of the keys instead of when they are pressed. Researchers at IBM investigated chord keyboards for both typewriters and computer data entry as early as 1959, with

1456-663: The blind) uses either 6 or 8 tactile 'points' from which all letters and numbers are formed. When Louis Braille invented it, it was produced with a needle holing successively all needed points in a cardboard sheet. In 1892, Frank Haven Hall , superintendent of the Illinois Institute for the Education of the Blind, created the Hall Braille Writer, which was like a typewriter with 6 keys, one for each dot in

1508-477: The boundary of two keys, or at the joining of three keys. Pressing down on one of the dimples would cause either one, two or three of the hexagonal buttons to be depressed at the same time, forming a chord that would be unique to that symbol. With this arrangement, a nine button keyboard with three rows of three hexagonal buttons could be fitted onto a telephone and could produce up to 33 different symbols. By choosing widely separated keys, one could employ one dimple as

1560-637: The chords ( e.g., Microwriter ), but the same principles apply. These portable devices first became popular with the wearable computer movement in the 1980s. Thad Starner from Georgia Institute of Technology and others published numerous studies showing that two-handed chorded text entry was faster and yielded fewer errors than on a QWERTY keyboard. Currently stenotype machines hold the record for fastest word entry. Many stenotype users can reach 300 words per minute. However, stenographers typically train for three years before reaching professional levels of speed and accuracy. The earliest known chord keyboard

1612-413: The codes automatically, rather than making them learn to use a new input device. Some early keypunch machines used a keyboard with 12 labeled keys to punch the correct holes in paper cards. The numbers 0 through 9 were represented by one punch; 26 letters were represented by combinations of two punches, and symbols were represented by combinations of two or three punches. Braille (a writing system for

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1664-439: The concept in a portable backpack -based computer and imaging system, WearCam, which he invented for photographic light vectoring. Computer interface keyers are typically one-handed grips, often used in conjunction with wearable computers. Unlike key board s, the wearable key er has no board upon which the switches are mounted. Additionally, by providing some other function – such as simultaneous grip of flash light and keying –

1716-533: The full character set of a modern keyboard. Braille comes closest, as it has been extended to eight bits. The only proposed modern standard, GKOS (or Global Keyboard Open Standard ) can support most characters and functions found on a computer keyboard but has had little commercial development. There is, however, a GKOS keyboard application available for iPhone since May 8, 2010, for Android since October 3, 2010 and for MeeGo Harmattan since October 27, 2011. Stenotype machines, sometimes used by court reporters , use

1768-439: The idea that it might be faster than touch-typing if some chords were used to enter whole words or parts of words. A 1975 design by IBM Fellow Nat Rochester had 14 keys that were dimpled on the edges as well as the top, so one finger could press two adjacent keys for additional combinations. Their results were inconclusive, but research continued until at least 1978. Doug Engelbart began experimenting with keysets to use with

1820-660: The keyboard: POP is a 3-key chord, using both P keys. Multiple open-source keyer/keyset designs are available, such as the pickey, a PS/2 device based on the PIC microcontroller ; the spiffchorder, a USB device based on the Atmel AVR family of microcontrollers; the FeatherChorder, a BLE chorder based on the Adafruit Feather, an all-in-one board incorporating an Arduino -compatible microcontroller; and

1872-407: The keyer is effectively hands-free, in the sense that one would still be holding the light source anyway. Chorded or chording keyboards have also been developed, and are intended to be used while seated having multiple keys mounted to a board rather than a portable grip. One type of these, the so-called half-QWERTY layout, uses only minimal chording, requiring the space bar to be pressed down if

1924-480: The keys were needed for medical reasons: Telegraphers would often develop a form of repetitive stress injury , which at that time was called " glass arm " by telegraphers, or "telegraphers’ paralysis" in medical literature. It was common and was caused by forcefully "pounding brass" up-and-down on conventional telegraph keys. Keys built for side-to-side motion would not aggravate nor cause the injury, and allowed disabled telegraphers to continue in their profession. With

1976-561: The mouse and keyset. In the 1970s the funding Engelbart's group received from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was cut and many key members of Engelbart's team went to work for Xerox PARC where they continued to experiment with the mouse and keyset. Keychord sets were used at Xerox PARC in the early 1980s, along with mice, GUIs , on the Xerox Star and Alto workstations. A one-button version of

2028-564: The mouse in the mid-1960s. In a famous 1968 demonstration , Engelbart introduced a computer human interface that included the QWERTY keyboard, a three button mouse , and a five key keyset. Engelbart used the keyset with his left hand and the mouse with his right to type text and enter commands. The mouse buttons marked selections and confirmed or aborted commands. Users in Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center at SRI became proficient with

2080-470: The mouse was incorporated into the Apple Macintosh but Steve Jobs decided against incorporating the chorded keyset. In the early 1980s, Philips Research labs at Redhill, Surrey did a brief study into small, cheap keyboards for entering text on a telephone. One solution used a grid of hexagonal keys with symbols inscribed into dimples in the keys that were either in the center of a key, across

2132-506: The nomenclature to include various "polyambic" or "multiambic" keyers, such as a "pentambic" keyer (five keys, one for each finger and the thumb), and "septambic" (four finger and three thumb buttons on a handgrip). These systems were developed primarily for use in early, experimental forms of wearable computing , and have also been adapted to cycling with a heads-up display in projects like BEHEMOTH by Steven K. Roberts . Mann (who primarily works in computational photography ) later utilized

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2184-412: The number of keys is low, the button areas can be made bigger and easier to hit on the small screen. The most common letters do not necessarily require chording as is the case with the GKOS keyboard optimised layouts (Android app) where the twelve most frequent characters only require single keys. The company CharaChorder commercially sells chorded entry devices. Their first commercially available device

2236-513: The same as the old-style double-contact single-lever telegraph keys. The double-lever keys are called "iambic keys", "double-paddle keys", or "squeeze keys". The name "squeeze key" is because both levers can be pressed at the same time, in which case the electronics then produces a string of "dit-dah-dit-dah-..." ( iambic rhythm, hence "iambic key"), or "dah-dit-dah-dit-..." ( trochaic rhythm), depending on which side makes contact first. Both types of keys have two distinct contacts, and are wired to

2288-428: The same type (stereo) plug, and can operate the same electronic keyer (for any commercial keyer made in the last 40 years or so) which itself connects into the same (monophonic) jack on a radio that one of the old-fashioned type telegraph keys plug into. Fully automatic electronic keying became popular during the 1960s; at present most Morse code is sent via electronic keyers, although some enthusiasts prefer to use

2340-416: The sender presses keys on a typewriter-style keyboard to send a character data stream to a receiver, and computation alleviates the need for timing to be done by the human operator. In this way, much higher typing speeds are possible. This is an early instance of a multi-key user-input device, as are computer keyboards (which, incidentally, are what one uses for modern RTTY ). The keyers discussed below are

2392-426: The speed discussion above. It is implemented on two popular mobile phones, each provided with software disambiguation, which allows users to avoid using the space-bar. "Multiambic" keyers for use with wearable computers were invented in Canada in the 1970s. Multiambic keyers are similar to chording keyboards but without the board, in that the keys are grouped in a cluster for being handheld, rather than for sitting on

2444-422: The switch contact (including the resetting the oscillating pendulum). Because the "dits" are created automatically by the pendulum mechanism, but the "dahs" are keyed the old-fashioned way, the keys are called " semi -automatic". (Modern electronic keyers create both the "dits" and the "dahs" automatically, as long as one of the switches is in contact, and are called " fully -automatic".) More than just convenience,

2496-668: The telegrapher holds the lever(s) to the left or right, one of the two telegraph key switches is in contact; the electronics in the keyer will respond by sending a continuous stream of "dits" or "dahs". The operator sends codes by choosing the direction the lever is held, and how long it is held on each side. If the operator swings from side to side slightly erratically, within some limits the electronics will none-the-less produce perfectly timed codes. Modern keys with only one lever, which swings horizontally between two contacts and returns to center when released, are called "single paddle keys"; they are also called "bushwhackers" or "sideswipers",

2548-756: The thumb. It is proposed for the hand which does not hold the mouse, in an exact continuation of Engelbart's vision. Keyer A keyer is an electronic device used for signaling by hand, by way of pressing one or more switches. The technical term keyer has two very similar meanings, which are nonetheless distinct: One for telegraphy and the other for accessory devices built for computer-human communication : In telegraphy , so-called iambic keys developed out of an earlier generation of novel side-to-side, double-contact keys (called "bushwhackers") and later, mechanical semi-automatic keys (called "bugs"). Semi-automatic keys were an innovation that had an impulse driven, horizontal pendulum mechanism that (only) created

2600-497: The user to issue editing commands, such as moving the cursor , or deleting words. Note that the number of points used in braille computing is not 6, but 8, as this allows the user, among other things, to distinguish between small and capital letters, as well as identify the position of the cursor. As a result, most newer chorded keyboards for braille input include at least nine keys. Touch screen chordic keyboards are available to smartphone users as an optional way of entering text. As

2652-412: Was part of the "five-needle" telegraph operator station, designed by Wheatstone and Cooke in 1836, in which any two of the five needles could point left or right to indicate letters on a grid. It was designed to be used by untrained operators (who would determine which keys to press by looking at the grid), and was not used where trained telegraph operators were available. The first widespread use of

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2704-569: Was presented by Ergoplic Kebords Ltd an Israeli Startup that was founded by Israeli researcher with intensive experience in Man Machine Interface design. The keyboard had 8 keys one for each finger and additional 3 keys that enabled the production of numbers, punctuations and control functions. The keyboard was fully compatible with the IBM PC and AT keyboards and had an Apple IIe version as well. Its key combinations were based on

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