There has been a number of obscure keyboards from history.
Even before computers were a thing.
This one is a rather early "keyboard". More of a ortho-linear layout than other keyboards at the time.
about the ball.
With this short piece on an early model out of the way we can focus on the actual main piece.
Surely there has been a lot of keyboards throughout the history of computers, so I will limit myself to the ergonomic keyboards, there is still a lot of them.
I have my own favourite keyboards, I have sought a specific keyboard myself for a long time.
Though I never managed to get one, I always wanted one.
This keyboard is the data-hand at this point a rather obscure keyboard. But still very impressive
Though the company making this keyboard went out of business in 2008 it is still a very attractive keyboard, and it has seen some kind of revival in the hacker space with new versions being made.
One is the lalboard a 3D printed board.
Info can be found on lalboard.com
the data-hand uses electric switches to have very low weight actuation switches, Though the layout seems familiar to most users it probably will take some time to get fully used to the new form, my wanting this keyboard was a large inspiration to the one I am typing this on. My current keyboard will be described at the end of this article.
First a little detour to another interesting part
want to type as fast as speech? This really is almost impossible on a normal keyboard, but what if you could do it ? What is it worth to you?
stenography is a way to type much faster than is possible on a qwerty keyboard, however the investment in time might make it somewhat more difficult to get into.
There are many stenos on the market that's compatible with the plover software, even though I do not know that much about steno, it is still fascinating.
steno keyboards work by "chording" keys together, and writing in words not letters.
This is what is used by court transcribers to keep up with the speech.
Though these keyboards are hobby stuff it is the same kind of technology that allows them to keep up, though they use more expensive stuff.
Now that we have looked at the steno I can share with you the keyboard I am using (at least most the time trying to get comfortable with it for using it for my computing).
I found it quite by accident, browsing youtube for no particular reason. And saw a video I was kind of hooked after some thinking I ordered one, and I have now had mine for about 2-3 weeks and I feel okay about typing on it, though still a bit slow in comparison to a "normal" keyboard, but I am getting better.
The keyboard is the charachorder
it might seem a bit strange, it has some super powers though, it is actually a keyboard and a steno combined, so you can chord words, it can have billions of chords internally in the keyboard.
