October 14, 2009 • 33 mins
If you've ever used a computer for typing, you've used a QWERTY keyboard. But did you know that its design is based on obsolete, inefficient technology? Learn more about the QWERTY keyboard -- and a host of other keyboards -- in this episode of TechStuff.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulettin,
(00:20):
and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is
senior writer Jonathan Strickland. I still have swine flu. I
should add that I've recorded this episode directly after another episode,
so please don't think that I've had swine flu for
like a month, just in case they don't play them sequentially. Yeah,
you better hope they don't play this one first. Yeah,
(00:42):
that would also be very confusing for you guys. But
if they do play this one first, trust me, it'll
all be worthwhile in the end. All right. So let's
start off with a little listener mail. Now, by a
little listener mail, I mean a lot of listener mail,
because I've got two different ones to read, alright. The
first one comes from Terrell and he says, hey, Jonathan
(01:03):
and Chris, I love listening to your podcast on my
drive to and from work. It makes being up at
five thirty bearable. Gosh, if only I had something like that,
I had a quick question for you. I have no
idea if this is a quick little subject or something longer,
but something I've always wondered. Why are the keys on
a computer keyboard laid out the way they are? I
understand that it came from typewriters, but when you look
at it and think about it, they just seemed to
(01:25):
be random letters and arbitrary places. I've been using a
keyboard my whole life, so I can type fast without
having to look at them without really a problem, but
the fact of the matter remains the same. I also
remember a couple of years ago hearing about a new
keyboard layout that was possibly going to happen, which supposedly
would make typing much faster. It's really glad it didn't
after using a keyboard for about two decades, but it's
(01:46):
interesting nonetheless. Anyways, thanks for a great podcast and hope
to hear from you. And then here's the second listener mail.
This one comes from Chad A k A. Chainsaw. Chainsaw
has this to say. Hey, there, as I was typing
up an email to your rival podcast, stuff, you should know,
I came up with an idea for your podcast. You see,
I don't use a normal quirty keyboard. I use a
(02:08):
divorate keyboard instead, So I thought a podcast on alternative
keyboard layouts could be fun. I also seem to remember
a keyboard made for gaming that you could buy custom
key layouts for that you would swap in and out
for each game. From what I remember, the main advantage
of it is that you would only have the keys
needed to play the game, So the buttons were bigger
and had the action printed right on it run, jump, reload, etcetera.
(02:32):
But I can't remember what it was called. The only
problem I see with this idea is explaining how the
keyboard looks with audio only. Anyways, let me know what
you think of the idea. So we're gonna do an
episode all about We're gonna talk about keyboards. That was
a long set up for a terrible job. You know
what Emily is gonna write to me about that? Probably Emily,
(02:54):
I've got swine flu. Go easy on me. So let's
start with the good old fashioned quirty keyboard. All no
and loath love. I don't load the quarty keyboard. Actually,
I'm quite proficient at the quarty keyboard, so I don't
loathe it either. Now, this comes from a design that
was patented way back in eighteen seven, in the eighteen seventies.
(03:18):
I thought I had the date, but I just have
the I have eighteen seventy three. Okay, so hum by
Christopher Shoals. Yes, and this was for something called a typewriter. Yes. Now,
the typewriter back in the day was a completely mechanical machine,
no electricity. Alright. I start to believe that some people
listening may not know that, but it is possible. So
(03:40):
if you may not have actually ever seen a real,
for honest goodness typewriter, I've used them before and they
are a challenge. An old one is really kind of
rough to use because if the action isn't great on
the keys, you have to push really hard to get
a good impression. I've got an Underwood at home. Actually,
the ways about seven hundred thousand pounds. It is very
(04:01):
very heavy. Yeah, I've I've I can't remember what the
brand was it was, what was the other big ones
sides Underwood, Remington, Yes, it was Remington's Remington. That was
the one that I used. Well, that's because you know,
Christopher Latham Shoals pitched it to Remington Arms Company. So
let's talk a little bit about why the keyboard, why
(04:22):
he decided to lay the keyboard out in this way.
First of all, well we'll talk about the whole way
a typewriter works is that the key is connected to
a mechanical arm that um, when you pressed out on
the key, little levers pushed the arm up and press
it against a ribbon and against a piece of paper,
and then you get the letter printed on the page.
(04:44):
Have you ever seen a piece of carbon paper? Again,
many of you may not have, But basically what it
does is as you press, if you put a piece
of paper down on the table and put a piece
of carbon paper down on top of it and then
rub something on it, you'll get a mark. When you
lift the carbon paper off the paper, it leaves a
mark on the paper. Well, that's essentially what the typewriter
ribbon is doing. The ribbon moves so that you're not
(05:07):
wearing a hole through the ribbon. Yeah, you would quickly
either wear a hole to the ribbon or you would
wear off the the inc essentially. Yeah, and it's pretty
fragile stuff too, so you don't want to, uh, you know,
type too many letters in one place on the ribbon.
But um, the typewriter keys on the older style typewriters,
and they were in use for I'm guessing probably around
(05:27):
a hundred years, you know, based on eighteen seventy three
to the IBM S Electric, one of which I also
have at home. Um, these little arms would come up
and they each have uh an individual letter on him.
They smack the ribbon and make the mark on the paper.
It's actually pretty simple stuff until you get to the
you know, mechanics of what happens when you start touch
(05:48):
typing and not hunting and pecking. Yeah. So one of
the issues here is that if you were a proficient
typist and you had the keys laid out in such
a way that the most the most common letters are
all under the strongest fingers, and you were to type
very quickly, you would suddenly start to experience problems with
this key, this this typewriter, and the problem was that
(06:10):
the arms would kind of get entangled. Um. I've actually
had this happen with old typewriters, where you know, you're
trying to type and then they a couple of them
stick together and you you have to you know, loosen
the two up and then you have to start over again. Um.
With the typewriter design that Schulz was working with, it
(06:31):
was particularly difficult because where the the the the little
arm was hitting the ribbon against the paper, it wasn't
in view of the type is. It was actually under
a carriage. You had to open the typewriter up to
get to that point. So if things jammed up, you
would not only have to stop, but you would actually
have to essentially remove part of the typewriter in order
(06:53):
to fix it. It was actually in your benefit to
two hunt and pack at that time, because the key
needed a chance to return to its play ace after
after you know, type a letter onto the paper. So
shoals is uh. His solution to this problem was a
pretty you know, ingenious one. What's the best way to
prevent keys from jamming up? Well, we could redesign the
(07:16):
typewriter so that it wasn't using that exact same method,
or you know, we could uh try and find some
way of of clearing each of the arms. But that's
a lot of work. Why don't we just put all
the keys in different places so that it naturally slows
down the type ist and and puts the most common
(07:38):
keys away from our common letters away from each other,
so that you're not likely to have two arms close
together strike at about the same time and then get
tangled up. Yep. So, in other words, bungling it up
for the rest of us on purpose, so that his
machine would work better. The thing is, though, it doesn't
always because as far as touched pin goes, once you
(08:01):
learned the layout of the keyboard, you know, it's a
matter of speed and proficiency. When you become proficient at
your speed increases anyway. Well, but the idea here was
that if you did keep the most common letters away
from each other, then even if you were a faster typist,
that you weren't likely to have them jam each other
because they wouldn't be right next to one another. Um,
(08:21):
sidebar number one, I have to sidebar number one. Uh.
My mother used to be a secretary back before they
were called admins. And um, she could type a hundred
thirty five words per minute. That's fast, that is very fast.
And um she you know, before this electric came out,
(08:42):
that'll be sidebart number two. Um, the before this electric
came out, the you know, and she would type on
one of these you know, quarty keyboards on a typewriter
with the all little arms, and eventually they had to
replace her typewriter because the little arms would wear on
one another so much that basically they were unusable, and
that the you know, they started wearing into the letters,
and that's sort of problematic. Um Sideboart number two, I
(09:06):
guess I'll go ahead and get it out of the way.
Is just you know, the other solution to the problem
is not the keyboard. Um. The later typewriters used a ball.
UM and it's it's pretty ingenious actually because all the
letters are you know, made into the single ball and
you can actually change fonts. It's actually pretty cool because
you can change fonts by changing the ball on the typewriter.
(09:28):
But what the the typewriter does when you press a key,
it rotates the ball and smacks the ribbon against the
paper for the position of that letter. So if the
t is on the side facing you, the typewriter actually
has to turn the ball all the way you know,
eight degrees, hit the paper, and then it returns to
its uh, you know place. But it also is very
(09:48):
uh it speeds up um for people who are typing
because uh, it is much much faster and the key
there's no there are no keys to jam on, you know,
on the other side, and it's you know, a lie
yea more efficient. However, you know, the keyboard is uh
now attached to a computer, and the whole point is
sort of mood yea. So here's the problem. Was that
(10:10):
the Rimington typewriter got really popular. It became the the
model that all other typewriters were essentially based off of
for in the at least in the English speaking world
for quite some time. And because of that, it meant
that we were kind of stuck with the quirty keyboard.
So even as technology advanced, because people have become so
(10:33):
used to the quirty keyboard, that became the standard, even
even when it became completely a non factor where your
technology advanced to the point where you didn't have to
worry about keys smashing into each other or or you know,
arms smashing into each other, or even then the electronic
age where you're not even having any moving parts didn't
matter because the quirty keyboard had been around so long.
(10:55):
For one thing, people had learned to type on the
quarty keyboard, and to change that would require retraining people
to type. They have to learn a new way to
type on a new keyboard, and that that's a you know,
a big turn off for a lot of organizations. They
don't want to spend the time and money that it
would take to retrain people to learn how to type
(11:16):
on a different kind of keyboard. Um, even if you
could technically type faster on the new keyboard once you
got proficient, because it just it means taking a step back.
You're like, well, yeah, I mean there are more efficient
ways to lay out the keyboard, but why would we
go through that trouble if this is good enough? Right,
and it's we've been using it for more than a
(11:37):
hundred years now, I mean, there's that's a lot of momentum.
Hasn't stopped people from trying. Nope, And I'm sure you're
probably going to start with Dr Augusta. Oh, I thought
it was John C. Dvorak. I was wondering why you
didn't have a key that just said. Anyone who knows
(11:57):
who John cvok is will find that funny, and everyone
else will have to go and google John C. Divora
I can find out why I made a grumpy noise
um nor nor is it the composer vor Jacques No
no so Nights Symphony is awesome. This this Divorac came
up with an alternative keyboard in the thirties, I believe, right. Yeah,
(12:19):
well apparently, um he sort of gained prominence thanks to
World War Two because they needed more efficient typists. And um,
from the information I've read, um, his his research indicated
that it took three years to reach forty seven words
per minute. Three years of touch typing on corty keyboards. Now, granted,
(12:41):
these are these are the old typewriters. Yeah, yeah, these
are this is pres electric days. You's got to remember
that that pressure that you use to press these keys
are in part what determines whether or not your letter
makes it onto the page. Because typing on these old
typewriters was a workout. Let me tell you, it's not
quite the same as like if you were to if
you were to take someone transport someone from the say
(13:02):
the eighteen eighties, who had been used to an old
eighteen eighties Remington typewriter and put them on, say a
MacBook Pro, you'd probably WinCE as they tried to type,
because you'd be worried that they were going to punch
holes through the machine. Um yeah, I'm sorry, I totally
derailed you. No no, no um. But according according to Dvorak.
(13:23):
Dr Dvorak, he uh, he said his on his keyboard,
you could reach that same level of proficiency after just
fifty two hours, and a Navy study seemed to back
him up because it said people using the Dvorak keyboards
were sent faster and they were sixty percent more accurate. Well,
I have to say, whenever I have a Navy official
viewing me, I do tend to type faster. Okay, I'm
(13:48):
just saying those guys are seals are scary guys. I'm
just saying I want to ask you when the last
time you had a seal watching you type was. But
I don't think I want to know. Well, the last
time was at Sea World, but was a totally different
kind of seal. I've been shammoon. Yeah, alright, So let's
talk a little bit about what DeVore I did to
(14:10):
design his keyboard, Like what what was he thinking about?
And he was thinking about a couple of thinking. Well,
he was thinking more than more than let's try and
space these letters apart so we slow people down. He
was he was concerned with making things easier for type
is not more difficult that that. Actually, uh yeah, a
lot of people think that it was directly for that,
but yeah, well, he was looking mainly at things like
(14:33):
how frequently certain letters are used in the English language,
so you know, the length. The letters that are used
more frequently should be located in ways that are easiest
to reach. The letters that are least frequently used should
be put someplace kind of out of the way because
you know, you're not gonna have to reach for him
that often. And then he also was looking at the
physiology of people's fingers. He wanted to see like, okay, well,
(14:56):
the strongest fingers should be the ones that are connected
to the that are you know, would be typing the
most common letters because you don't tire out as quickly,
you can go much faster. Um, So that also played
a part in it. So if you look at the
Divorak keyboard, I mean, it looks pretty much the same
as a Quarty keyboard is just the letters are all
in different places than what you're used to, except for
(15:17):
like the A the A button is pretty much in
the same place, and there are more than one Divorac
layout scheme. So when you say Divora keyboard, they're not
all the same, but the the Divora typists all have
atrophied pinkies because there are no they don't have to
use them for anything really well, the left pinky. That's
(15:40):
another thing I should point out is that the Corty keyboard,
um it favors left handers, which probably another reason why
I like, Yeah, there are more words that you can
type with just your left hand then you can type
with um your right hand. For instance, I think the
longest word that you can type with your left hand
is stewardess is really yeah, it's a flight attendants. You
(16:04):
can't type with one. I know. I I type that
word now and I get slapped. It happens. But anyway,
the the Divora keyboard kind of shifts that a little
bit over to the right hand. Uh so the right
hand gets a little more weight because I mean, more
people are right handed than left handed. So we sinister
people are kind of shoved aside yet again, made the
social pariah's forced to learn how to write with our
(16:26):
other hand when we're naturally gifted with the left hand.
I'm going to smack you in the hand with the
ruler if you type only only with the right hand.
If you smack me in the right hand, I'm okay
because I'm left handed. So but the other, you know,
the couple of other issues, like like all the all
the vowels in dr X keyboard are on a little
(16:47):
row on the home row on the left hand, so
instead of them being spread across the keyboard, they're all
located in one little so it's like a great vowel shift. Yes,
it is a great vowel shift. The three linguists and
listening are laughing. Everyone else is confused. Everyone else is like, huh,
I think I might have heard of that this in
(17:07):
my Shakespeare class. Um. I was just going to, well,
I want to make sure before we get to you know,
closing out the divorat keyboard, and I get to make
a point. All right, go ahead and make your point.
I was just gonna say that, apparently, based on an
article I saw in Reason magazine, the Navy study was biased.
(17:27):
In general, the divorat keyboard is not necessarily more efficient,
but it may be more ergonomic because a lot of
people have said that, or you know, people I've read
said that it can it can be a more casual
uh typing style. It can you know, it's not. You
don't have to twist and turn your your fingers quite
(17:49):
as much. I don't have quite as many finger gymnastics
going on as with the quarty keyboard, but I but
I kind of enjoy it. You know. My my pinky
finger is getting pretty good at the rings. Yeah. My
my typing speed on a quirty keyboard is about ninety
words per minuted. Um. It would take me a long time,
I think to get up to that speed with the
door at keyboard, just from just having to learn the
new layout. And like Chainsaw I uh and and some
(18:13):
of our other listeners, I'm perfectly comfortable typing without looking
at the keys. Uh. So you know, it's the idea
of having to learn a new keyboard is kind of
intimidating to me. But we wanted to talk about a
couple of other keyboards as well. Now you were looking
at some keyboards for different languages and regions, right, yeah,
(18:36):
about that a little bit. A lot of a lot
of the keyboards that you find around the world are
you know, if you went to another country, obviously, if
you went to someplace like China or um, you know,
Thailand or someplace, you're going to see quite different characters,
like a Kanji keyboard would be much different from an
English keyboard. And as you were you were saying before
(18:56):
we started recordings, a lot of these require multi key presses,
but because they're basically using very very similar layouts, I
would assume probably because the manufacturer of keyboards. You know,
if you're going to make keyboards for people all around
the world, you know you're gonna try to fit the
same rough number of keys. It's about keys, and if
(19:17):
you've got a language that has hundreds and hundreds of characters,
by whole characters, then you're going to need some sort
of of probably a software solution rather than a hardware
solution to try and and and equivalent make the equivalent
of that in your keyboard. So yeah, you would have
(19:37):
to maybe push five or six different keys in succession
to create one single character. But um, actually it's probably
less than that because that would be when I sit
there and think about that exponentially, that would be a
huge number of characters. It's probably more like two or three.
But it's funny because I was talking to our producer
Tyler right for we started recording about you know, the
operating system supports other layouts. You know we were talking about.
(20:01):
I've never seen a Warak keyboard in the in the
flesh or the plastic and um but you can easily
go and get into your computers OS settings and change
it over, but the letters will still be right. Most
of the most current operating systems do support alternate keyboard layouts,
(20:21):
and some of them you can even customize it exactly
the way you want. You don't even have to necessarily
use a a um uh you know, a standardized layout
at all if you really wanted to and the keys.
What will happen is operating system will map the the
keys to their new designations. So you might say, you
know what, UM, I don't want the Q key to
(20:42):
be the Q key anymore. I want that to be uh,
you know Z, because I hardly ever use Z and
I'll be from my little pinky and I'm gonna put
that right there. Not that I think you use Q
that off in either, but the point being that you
could relocate it and then when you press it, like
the operating system maps that pressed mean Z. Granted, the
(21:02):
physical key itself is still going to say Q. Well,
you could depending on the kind of keyboard you have
you may be able to pry the keys off and
replace them right or or you could always just put
stickers on top with new letters on them. But uh yeah,
I mean you could you could go you know, sort
of depends on the language. Like you might see the
ASSERTI keyboard in France or the Courts keyboard in in Germany,
(21:26):
and they've got specific keys for AO and you with
the umlaut because they're so frequently used, right, whereas we
have to like insert a symbol or something like that
or do uh some sort of macro or and you know,
you can find keyboards with a strict alphabetical uh layout,
you know, a B C D keyboards, that's what they
call us. And then there's the Expert keyboard, which is
(21:48):
a different layout that was designed in two thousand three.
We actually it's in our our article on keyboards on
the on the website you know, stuffworks dot com. Yeah,
what's what's the expert keyboard? I haven't read this article?
Um actually when I went to the website to learn
more about it. Uh, it's it's designed as an alternative
to the dvorate keyboard. It actually has it again as
(22:08):
you know, based on the keys that you want to strike,
and the frequency with which the letters occur. It has
to ease one for each hand because he appears so frequently. Interesting,
but it's supposed to, you know, make the key combinations
from hand to hand more efficient. I would definitely make
typing I E E E easier. True, not that we
(22:31):
write about them all that frequently, No, we just go I.
But those are just different keyboard layouts. And when we
were going to talk about different kinds of keyboards, like
the gaming keyboards, right, so there are gaming keyboards out there.
I really don't have a whole lot to say about them.
I mean, they're mainly they're just really a special kind
of control. Really, when you get down to it, well,
it's another way for it's another way for the keyboard
manufacturers to make money. Yeah, I mean here by another
(22:53):
eight dollar keyboard. Some of them are. Some of them
are designed in such a way so that it's easier
for you to reach certain keys, like the W A
S keys, which are often used in first person shooters
and other other games for moving your character around. Now,
on a standard keyboard, it might be a little cramp
to put your fingers there. You know, it's slowwle weird
because you're if you especially if you want to be
(23:14):
holding down all or have contact with all four keys
at the same time, you're gonna end up with a
cramped hand after about half an hour. UM. So a
lot of these keyboards just have a different spacing, um,
and they may be a little more reinforced. Some of
them have backlighting, um, you know, stuff that makes it
look a little fancier. In general, they're still very functional keyboards. Uh.
(23:34):
Some of them may have uh pre set macros where
you can, um, have things set up so that pushing
one button actually executes a series of commands, which you know,
a lot of games support that, and you can do
it on your own with a normal keyboard, but you
kind of have to know what you're doing. Some of
these kind of take that out of your you know,
out of your hands and do it automatically so you
(23:55):
don't have to actually, you know, sit there and follow
a set of instructions to pro graham your your macro's
so that you can be leaked. Um. I've never had
much use for or the gaming keyboards that much, but
then that's because I'm not a I'm not a big gamer. Um.
If I were, I probably would love one of those
there in general, I've heard good things about them from gamers,
(24:19):
but since I don't game often enough to be in there,
uh esteemed company, it's not something that I've ever invested in. Now,
if we want to talk about a real investment, well,
first let's talk about the first let's talk about the
major investment. Let's talk about the major league crazy investment.
Major investment would be Optimist Maximus. Yes, the O L
(24:39):
E ED or O lead keyboard from art limav. Yes,
it has keys that are each an individual display. And
you want to talk about for a keyboards or mapping
keys and pulling them off, you don't have to do
it because your keys can be anything you want them
to be, right, because each key is essentially a little Yeah,
it's a little display. So if you want to too,
(25:00):
if you somethingly wanted to type in the cyrillic alphabet,
you can tell your keyboard that that's what you want
and suddenly all of your English letters will change to
cyrillic letters. And hey, you know, at the bargain price
of fifteen on think geek dot com at the moment
they're out of stock. Yeah, I've seen they can. I
think the lowest I've seen is like fourteen fifty seven.
(25:21):
So we're talking around a thousand, five hundred bucks for
most places. For this keyboard. That's really really expensive. Now
that you might sit there and think like, wow, that's
got to be one of the most expensive keyboards out there,
why don't you take a little one of the most expensive.
But if you want to talk about a really expensive keyboard,
let's talk about fairlights z Energy keyboard. This thing costs
(25:43):
twenty eight grand. Now, when it came out, I saw
a lot of reports about twenty thousand dollar keyboard, and
you know, I actually wrote an article about how this
energy keyboard works, and uh, the headlines are a little
miss eating because you would think, like, who the heck
would pay twenty dollars for a keyboard? Well, it's not.
(26:05):
It's not just a keyboard. It's actually part of a
comprehensive audio and video engineering center. Okay, so it's it's
more like a it's more like a really complex audio
and video editing device as opposed to just a keyboard.
It actually has its own memory, it's got its own screen,
Like there's a screen built into the keyboard each key
(26:25):
just like optimist Maximus is its own screen. Um, you
can even if you wanted to display video through your keys.
I don't know why you would want to do that,
but you could. But you can create animated uh images
on your keys, so like, uh, maybe a flashing red
light when you're recording something, So one of your keys
is flashing red you know, Oh, that means that the
(26:47):
record button has been hit. We're actually recording this, Like
I have to ask Tyler all the time or Matt
or whoever is in here are we currently recording because
I kind of need to know if I have to
behave myself or not. Like that stops you. Yeah, well,
let's just say that we've had people ask us about
out takes. I'm just gonna tell you guys right now,
we don't really have any outtakes because when we make mistakes,
(27:08):
we kind of keep them in the show pretty much.
I mean some of you have pointed those out, but
um uh we do talk before and after the shows
and it's juicy and I'm sure you guys would all
love to hear that, but we don't record those. I
specifically request that we turned the recorder off for that,
um at any rate. So this twenty keyboard is really
(27:28):
for audio engineers and video engineers. It's not meant for
the average consumer. It's not meant for someone playing Doom
or Quake or Half Life two or anything like that.
It's meant for someone who's producing music videos or albums
or whatever and they need to have. Essentially a portable
studio is what it turns out to be. Yeah, Um,
are you done with this energy? Yeah? Well, I was
(27:51):
gonna say one other thing. It it can record up
to ninety It can do handle it to ninety six
channels for the base model. The top of the line
level two thirty channels. Okay, so when you think about
the Beatles recording their albums on four channels, yep, imagine
what they'd sound like with two and thirty channels. That's
(28:12):
a lot of ringo. So what were you going to say?
I was going to mention, um, another kind of keyboard
that's considerably less expensive than that. It's uh that John
Fuller wrote about the the laser virtual keyboard, right. Um,
Basically this isn't a keyboard at all, except it kind
of is. Um. It's a device that you can hook
(28:33):
up to uh while a computer or uh, you know,
certain types of other electronic devices that require keyboards and
UM basically uses a laser and it shines through what's
called a diffractive optical element UH. And with with that
and lenses, certain kinds of lenses, it projects an image
of a keyboard on say the desktop in front of you.
(28:57):
So in front of you where there was a blank table,
now you see the keys from a keyboard. UM, and
an infrared laser diode at the base UH shines a
beam of light parallel to the table surface, so that
when you when you type on you know, basically you're
drumming your fingers on the table in front of you
(29:17):
on the pictures of the select keys. UH. The complementary
metal oxide semiconductor that's CMOS looks at where your finger
is and determines the position relative to where it's supposed
to be and says, okay, well he's typing an S,
he's typing a G, he's typing an L. And then exactly, hey,
(29:38):
you know, maybe they're just transferring from a Dvorat keyboard
lamp anyway, UM, and it sends that information back to
the computer, and you know, the computer is using this
virtual keyboard to to do that. So but it's considerably
less expensive than this energy, Like you know, it's a
hundred and fifty dollars um. I don't no, I would
(30:00):
love to try. I've I've heard people say that it's
a neat idea, but that um that you know, it's
kind of weird to use it. I don't know if
that means that it's weird in the sense that since
you don't have the touch feedback, it just throws you off,
or you know, like because when you press the button,
there's something about that sense like it tells you that
you successfully press the button before you see that show
(30:20):
up on the screen. Thank you for the segue. What's
that one of the oddest things. I don't think it's
really that odd, but I think it's sort of odd
that one of the keyboards that's really really popular. Remember
those IBM keyboards that they used to make, the old
beige things and when you would hear somebody and they
would be really really loud, they had these really heavy
(30:42):
duty switches in them which made that loud noise. There
are people who absolutely love those things, are buying them refurbished,
And there's another company that's coming out with the same
thing called the DOSK keyboard, so it's it's specifically loud
and clackee on purpose. It is specifically loud and claque
on purpose. So you know you press that key well,
I mean, I cannot you know, a thin, rubbery membrane keyboard.
(31:04):
It is a big, thick, plastic, chunky thing with a
huge switch inside that clacks when you hit it. Well, again,
for for those of us who can type while looking
away from the screen, like often, I'll have someone come
up and talk to me, and I'll be in the
middle of typing a sense and I'll turn around. I'll
look at them while I'm still typing, which tends to
throw them off for some reason. Apparently that's creepy in
some way. I never really thought of it that way,
(31:24):
but yeah, you that could come in hand because you
could realize that, hey, I didn't actually hit that E
when I thought I hit the e. UM. Now, granted,
with a lot of autocorrect software, sometimes that's not really
necessary unless you're auto correct software is awful and keeps
on putting in words that you totally didn't mean to
have in there. Um, which does happen, and it's hilarious.
(31:45):
I am finished with keyboards. I think we are okay. Well,
then let's do a little quick listener mail. This listener
mail comes from Adrian and Adrian has hey, guys, love
your podcast. I'm planning to buy a computer, but I
want to know when Windows might be releasing their latest
operating system. Would you guys know when it might be out?
(32:07):
Thank you so much? Next week? Actually it's October twenty two,
um is the official release date, which, by the time
you hear this, may have been last week. We don't
know when when our podcast will be released, but people
are a lot of people have asked us this, so
there's chance that's already in stores now by the time
you hear this. But October twenty swod was the official
release date. UM. Thanks Adrian and if any of you
(32:30):
have any questions, concerns, criticisms, podcast suggestions, you can write us.
Our email address is tech stuff at how stuffworks dot com.
I do want to say that we talked about We
talked about the inventor of the Corty keyboard. We have
a special podcast, the Stuff of Genius, that has an
episode all about him. Indeed, so you should watch that.
Stuff of Genius is absolutely brilliant, very funny animation, to
(32:54):
great text. Yeah, you guys got to check that out.
And remember also at one pm Eastern one neusdays, Chris
and I host a live hooting Nanny. I mean a
live technology news podcast show. It's text stuff Live, vaguely
like a hooting nanny. Yeah. You can find all about
this hooting Nanny at our blogs. So go to house
stuff Works dot com and check it out. Crispy and
(33:16):
I will talk to you again really soon for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works dot com and be sure to check out
the new tech stuff blog now on the house stuff
Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
(33:36):
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulettin,
(00:20):
and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is
senior writer Jonathan Strickland. I still have swine flu. I
should add that I've recorded this episode directly after another episode,
so please don't think that I've had swine flu for
like a month, just in case they don't play them sequentially. Yeah,
you better hope they don't play this one first. Yeah,
(00:42):
that would also be very confusing for you guys. But
if they do play this one first, trust me, it'll
all be worthwhile in the end. All right. So let's
start off with a little listener mail. Now, by a
little listener mail, I mean a lot of listener mail,
because I've got two different ones to read, alright. The
first one comes from Terrell and he says, hey, Jonathan
(01:03):
and Chris, I love listening to your podcast on my
drive to and from work. It makes being up at
five thirty bearable. Gosh, if only I had something like that,
I had a quick question for you. I have no
idea if this is a quick little subject or something longer,
but something I've always wondered. Why are the keys on
a computer keyboard laid out the way they are? I
understand that it came from typewriters, but when you look
at it and think about it, they just seemed to
(01:25):
be random letters and arbitrary places. I've been using a
keyboard my whole life, so I can type fast without
having to look at them without really a problem, but
the fact of the matter remains the same. I also
remember a couple of years ago hearing about a new
keyboard layout that was possibly going to happen, which supposedly
would make typing much faster. It's really glad it didn't
after using a keyboard for about two decades, but it's
(01:46):
interesting nonetheless. Anyways, thanks for a great podcast and hope
to hear from you. And then here's the second listener mail.
This one comes from Chad A k A. Chainsaw. Chainsaw
has this to say. Hey, there, as I was typing
up an email to your rival podcast, stuff, you should know,
I came up with an idea for your podcast. You see,
I don't use a normal quirty keyboard. I use a
(02:08):
divorate keyboard instead, So I thought a podcast on alternative
keyboard layouts could be fun. I also seem to remember
a keyboard made for gaming that you could buy custom
key layouts for that you would swap in and out
for each game. From what I remember, the main advantage
of it is that you would only have the keys
needed to play the game, So the buttons were bigger
and had the action printed right on it run, jump, reload, etcetera.
(02:32):
But I can't remember what it was called. The only
problem I see with this idea is explaining how the
keyboard looks with audio only. Anyways, let me know what
you think of the idea. So we're gonna do an
episode all about We're gonna talk about keyboards. That was
a long set up for a terrible job. You know
what Emily is gonna write to me about that? Probably Emily,
(02:54):
I've got swine flu. Go easy on me. So let's
start with the good old fashioned quirty keyboard. All no
and loath love. I don't load the quarty keyboard. Actually,
I'm quite proficient at the quarty keyboard, so I don't
loathe it either. Now, this comes from a design that
was patented way back in eighteen seven, in the eighteen seventies.
(03:18):
I thought I had the date, but I just have
the I have eighteen seventy three. Okay, so hum by
Christopher Shoals. Yes, and this was for something called a typewriter. Yes. Now,
the typewriter back in the day was a completely mechanical machine,
no electricity. Alright. I start to believe that some people
listening may not know that, but it is possible. So
(03:40):
if you may not have actually ever seen a real,
for honest goodness typewriter, I've used them before and they
are a challenge. An old one is really kind of
rough to use because if the action isn't great on
the keys, you have to push really hard to get
a good impression. I've got an Underwood at home. Actually,
the ways about seven hundred thousand pounds. It is very
(04:01):
very heavy. Yeah, I've I've I can't remember what the
brand was it was, what was the other big ones
sides Underwood, Remington, Yes, it was Remington's Remington. That was
the one that I used. Well, that's because you know,
Christopher Latham Shoals pitched it to Remington Arms Company. So
let's talk a little bit about why the keyboard, why
(04:22):
he decided to lay the keyboard out in this way.
First of all, well we'll talk about the whole way
a typewriter works is that the key is connected to
a mechanical arm that um, when you pressed out on
the key, little levers pushed the arm up and press
it against a ribbon and against a piece of paper,
and then you get the letter printed on the page.
(04:44):
Have you ever seen a piece of carbon paper? Again,
many of you may not have, But basically what it
does is as you press, if you put a piece
of paper down on the table and put a piece
of carbon paper down on top of it and then
rub something on it, you'll get a mark. When you
lift the carbon paper off the paper, it leaves a
mark on the paper. Well, that's essentially what the typewriter
ribbon is doing. The ribbon moves so that you're not
(05:07):
wearing a hole through the ribbon. Yeah, you would quickly
either wear a hole to the ribbon or you would
wear off the the inc essentially. Yeah, and it's pretty
fragile stuff too, so you don't want to, uh, you know,
type too many letters in one place on the ribbon.
But um, the typewriter keys on the older style typewriters,
and they were in use for I'm guessing probably around
(05:27):
a hundred years, you know, based on eighteen seventy three
to the IBM S Electric, one of which I also
have at home. Um, these little arms would come up
and they each have uh an individual letter on him.
They smack the ribbon and make the mark on the paper.
It's actually pretty simple stuff until you get to the
you know, mechanics of what happens when you start touch
(05:48):
typing and not hunting and pecking. Yeah. So one of
the issues here is that if you were a proficient
typist and you had the keys laid out in such
a way that the most the most common letters are
all under the strongest fingers, and you were to type
very quickly, you would suddenly start to experience problems with
this key, this this typewriter, and the problem was that
(06:10):
the arms would kind of get entangled. Um. I've actually
had this happen with old typewriters, where you know, you're
trying to type and then they a couple of them
stick together and you you have to you know, loosen
the two up and then you have to start over again. Um.
With the typewriter design that Schulz was working with, it
(06:31):
was particularly difficult because where the the the the little
arm was hitting the ribbon against the paper, it wasn't
in view of the type is. It was actually under
a carriage. You had to open the typewriter up to
get to that point. So if things jammed up, you
would not only have to stop, but you would actually
have to essentially remove part of the typewriter in order
(06:53):
to fix it. It was actually in your benefit to
two hunt and pack at that time, because the key
needed a chance to return to its play ace after
after you know, type a letter onto the paper. So
shoals is uh. His solution to this problem was a
pretty you know, ingenious one. What's the best way to
prevent keys from jamming up? Well, we could redesign the
(07:16):
typewriter so that it wasn't using that exact same method,
or you know, we could uh try and find some
way of of clearing each of the arms. But that's
a lot of work. Why don't we just put all
the keys in different places so that it naturally slows
down the type ist and and puts the most common
(07:38):
keys away from our common letters away from each other,
so that you're not likely to have two arms close
together strike at about the same time and then get
tangled up. Yep. So, in other words, bungling it up
for the rest of us on purpose, so that his
machine would work better. The thing is, though, it doesn't
always because as far as touched pin goes, once you
(08:01):
learned the layout of the keyboard, you know, it's a
matter of speed and proficiency. When you become proficient at
your speed increases anyway. Well, but the idea here was
that if you did keep the most common letters away
from each other, then even if you were a faster typist,
that you weren't likely to have them jam each other
because they wouldn't be right next to one another. Um,
(08:21):
sidebar number one, I have to sidebar number one. Uh.
My mother used to be a secretary back before they
were called admins. And um, she could type a hundred
thirty five words per minute. That's fast, that is very fast.
And um she you know, before this electric came out,
(08:42):
that'll be sidebart number two. Um, the before this electric
came out, the you know, and she would type on
one of these you know, quarty keyboards on a typewriter
with the all little arms, and eventually they had to
replace her typewriter because the little arms would wear on
one another so much that basically they were unusable, and
that the you know, they started wearing into the letters,
and that's sort of problematic. Um Sideboart number two, I
(09:06):
guess I'll go ahead and get it out of the way.
Is just you know, the other solution to the problem
is not the keyboard. Um. The later typewriters used a ball.
UM and it's it's pretty ingenious actually because all the
letters are you know, made into the single ball and
you can actually change fonts. It's actually pretty cool because
you can change fonts by changing the ball on the typewriter.
(09:28):
But what the the typewriter does when you press a key,
it rotates the ball and smacks the ribbon against the
paper for the position of that letter. So if the
t is on the side facing you, the typewriter actually
has to turn the ball all the way you know,
eight degrees, hit the paper, and then it returns to
its uh, you know place. But it also is very
(09:48):
uh it speeds up um for people who are typing
because uh, it is much much faster and the key
there's no there are no keys to jam on, you know,
on the other side, and it's you know, a lie
yea more efficient. However, you know, the keyboard is uh
now attached to a computer, and the whole point is
sort of mood yea. So here's the problem. Was that
(10:10):
the Rimington typewriter got really popular. It became the the
model that all other typewriters were essentially based off of
for in the at least in the English speaking world
for quite some time. And because of that, it meant
that we were kind of stuck with the quirty keyboard.
So even as technology advanced, because people have become so
(10:33):
used to the quirty keyboard, that became the standard, even
even when it became completely a non factor where your
technology advanced to the point where you didn't have to
worry about keys smashing into each other or or you know,
arms smashing into each other, or even then the electronic
age where you're not even having any moving parts didn't
matter because the quirty keyboard had been around so long.
(10:55):
For one thing, people had learned to type on the
quarty keyboard, and to change that would require retraining people
to type. They have to learn a new way to
type on a new keyboard, and that that's a you know,
a big turn off for a lot of organizations. They
don't want to spend the time and money that it
would take to retrain people to learn how to type
(11:16):
on a different kind of keyboard. Um, even if you
could technically type faster on the new keyboard once you
got proficient, because it just it means taking a step back.
You're like, well, yeah, I mean there are more efficient
ways to lay out the keyboard, but why would we
go through that trouble if this is good enough? Right,
and it's we've been using it for more than a
(11:37):
hundred years now, I mean, there's that's a lot of momentum.
Hasn't stopped people from trying. Nope, And I'm sure you're
probably going to start with Dr Augusta. Oh, I thought
it was John C. Dvorak. I was wondering why you
didn't have a key that just said. Anyone who knows
(11:57):
who John cvok is will find that funny, and everyone
else will have to go and google John C. Divora
I can find out why I made a grumpy noise
um nor nor is it the composer vor Jacques No
no so Nights Symphony is awesome. This this Divorac came
up with an alternative keyboard in the thirties, I believe, right. Yeah,
(12:19):
well apparently, um he sort of gained prominence thanks to
World War Two because they needed more efficient typists. And um,
from the information I've read, um, his his research indicated
that it took three years to reach forty seven words
per minute. Three years of touch typing on corty keyboards. Now, granted,
(12:41):
these are these are the old typewriters. Yeah, yeah, these
are this is pres electric days. You's got to remember
that that pressure that you use to press these keys
are in part what determines whether or not your letter
makes it onto the page. Because typing on these old
typewriters was a workout. Let me tell you, it's not
quite the same as like if you were to if
you were to take someone transport someone from the say
(13:02):
the eighteen eighties, who had been used to an old
eighteen eighties Remington typewriter and put them on, say a
MacBook Pro, you'd probably WinCE as they tried to type,
because you'd be worried that they were going to punch
holes through the machine. Um yeah, I'm sorry, I totally
derailed you. No no, no um. But according according to Dvorak.
(13:23):
Dr Dvorak, he uh, he said his on his keyboard,
you could reach that same level of proficiency after just
fifty two hours, and a Navy study seemed to back
him up because it said people using the Dvorak keyboards
were sent faster and they were sixty percent more accurate. Well,
I have to say, whenever I have a Navy official
viewing me, I do tend to type faster. Okay, I'm
(13:48):
just saying those guys are seals are scary guys. I'm
just saying I want to ask you when the last
time you had a seal watching you type was. But
I don't think I want to know. Well, the last
time was at Sea World, but was a totally different
kind of seal. I've been shammoon. Yeah, alright, So let's
talk a little bit about what DeVore I did to
(14:10):
design his keyboard, Like what what was he thinking about?
And he was thinking about a couple of thinking. Well,
he was thinking more than more than let's try and
space these letters apart so we slow people down. He
was he was concerned with making things easier for type
is not more difficult that that. Actually, uh yeah, a
lot of people think that it was directly for that,
but yeah, well, he was looking mainly at things like
(14:33):
how frequently certain letters are used in the English language,
so you know, the length. The letters that are used
more frequently should be located in ways that are easiest
to reach. The letters that are least frequently used should
be put someplace kind of out of the way because
you know, you're not gonna have to reach for him
that often. And then he also was looking at the
physiology of people's fingers. He wanted to see like, okay, well,
(14:56):
the strongest fingers should be the ones that are connected
to the that are you know, would be typing the
most common letters because you don't tire out as quickly,
you can go much faster. Um, So that also played
a part in it. So if you look at the
Divorak keyboard, I mean, it looks pretty much the same
as a Quarty keyboard is just the letters are all
in different places than what you're used to, except for
(15:17):
like the A the A button is pretty much in
the same place, and there are more than one Divorac
layout scheme. So when you say Divora keyboard, they're not
all the same, but the the Divora typists all have
atrophied pinkies because there are no they don't have to
use them for anything really well, the left pinky. That's
(15:40):
another thing I should point out is that the Corty keyboard,
um it favors left handers, which probably another reason why
I like, Yeah, there are more words that you can
type with just your left hand then you can type
with um your right hand. For instance, I think the
longest word that you can type with your left hand
is stewardess is really yeah, it's a flight attendants. You
(16:04):
can't type with one. I know. I I type that
word now and I get slapped. It happens. But anyway,
the the Divora keyboard kind of shifts that a little
bit over to the right hand. Uh so the right
hand gets a little more weight because I mean, more
people are right handed than left handed. So we sinister
people are kind of shoved aside yet again, made the
social pariah's forced to learn how to write with our
(16:26):
other hand when we're naturally gifted with the left hand.
I'm going to smack you in the hand with the
ruler if you type only only with the right hand.
If you smack me in the right hand, I'm okay
because I'm left handed. So but the other, you know,
the couple of other issues, like like all the all
the vowels in dr X keyboard are on a little
(16:47):
row on the home row on the left hand, so
instead of them being spread across the keyboard, they're all
located in one little so it's like a great vowel shift. Yes,
it is a great vowel shift. The three linguists and
listening are laughing. Everyone else is confused. Everyone else is like, huh,
I think I might have heard of that this in
(17:07):
my Shakespeare class. Um. I was just going to, well,
I want to make sure before we get to you know,
closing out the divorat keyboard, and I get to make
a point. All right, go ahead and make your point.
I was just gonna say that, apparently, based on an
article I saw in Reason magazine, the Navy study was biased.
(17:27):
In general, the divorat keyboard is not necessarily more efficient,
but it may be more ergonomic because a lot of
people have said that, or you know, people I've read
said that it can it can be a more casual
uh typing style. It can you know, it's not. You
don't have to twist and turn your your fingers quite
(17:49):
as much. I don't have quite as many finger gymnastics
going on as with the quarty keyboard, but I but
I kind of enjoy it. You know. My my pinky
finger is getting pretty good at the rings. Yeah. My
my typing speed on a quirty keyboard is about ninety
words per minuted. Um. It would take me a long time,
I think to get up to that speed with the
door at keyboard, just from just having to learn the
new layout. And like Chainsaw I uh and and some
(18:13):
of our other listeners, I'm perfectly comfortable typing without looking
at the keys. Uh. So you know, it's the idea
of having to learn a new keyboard is kind of
intimidating to me. But we wanted to talk about a
couple of other keyboards as well. Now you were looking
at some keyboards for different languages and regions, right, yeah,
(18:36):
about that a little bit. A lot of a lot
of the keyboards that you find around the world are
you know, if you went to another country, obviously, if
you went to someplace like China or um, you know,
Thailand or someplace, you're going to see quite different characters,
like a Kanji keyboard would be much different from an
English keyboard. And as you were you were saying before
(18:56):
we started recordings, a lot of these require multi key presses,
but because they're basically using very very similar layouts, I
would assume probably because the manufacturer of keyboards. You know,
if you're going to make keyboards for people all around
the world, you know you're gonna try to fit the
same rough number of keys. It's about keys, and if
(19:17):
you've got a language that has hundreds and hundreds of characters,
by whole characters, then you're going to need some sort
of of probably a software solution rather than a hardware
solution to try and and and equivalent make the equivalent
of that in your keyboard. So yeah, you would have
(19:37):
to maybe push five or six different keys in succession
to create one single character. But um, actually it's probably
less than that because that would be when I sit
there and think about that exponentially, that would be a
huge number of characters. It's probably more like two or three.
But it's funny because I was talking to our producer
Tyler right for we started recording about you know, the
operating system supports other layouts. You know we were talking about.
(20:01):
I've never seen a Warak keyboard in the in the
flesh or the plastic and um but you can easily
go and get into your computers OS settings and change
it over, but the letters will still be right. Most
of the most current operating systems do support alternate keyboard layouts,
(20:21):
and some of them you can even customize it exactly
the way you want. You don't even have to necessarily
use a a um uh you know, a standardized layout
at all if you really wanted to and the keys.
What will happen is operating system will map the the
keys to their new designations. So you might say, you
know what, UM, I don't want the Q key to
(20:42):
be the Q key anymore. I want that to be uh,
you know Z, because I hardly ever use Z and
I'll be from my little pinky and I'm gonna put
that right there. Not that I think you use Q
that off in either, but the point being that you
could relocate it and then when you press it, like
the operating system maps that pressed mean Z. Granted, the
(21:02):
physical key itself is still going to say Q. Well,
you could depending on the kind of keyboard you have
you may be able to pry the keys off and
replace them right or or you could always just put
stickers on top with new letters on them. But uh yeah,
I mean you could you could go you know, sort
of depends on the language. Like you might see the
ASSERTI keyboard in France or the Courts keyboard in in Germany,
(21:26):
and they've got specific keys for AO and you with
the umlaut because they're so frequently used, right, whereas we
have to like insert a symbol or something like that
or do uh some sort of macro or and you know,
you can find keyboards with a strict alphabetical uh layout,
you know, a B C D keyboards, that's what they
call us. And then there's the Expert keyboard, which is
(21:48):
a different layout that was designed in two thousand three.
We actually it's in our our article on keyboards on
the on the website you know, stuffworks dot com. Yeah,
what's what's the expert keyboard? I haven't read this article?
Um actually when I went to the website to learn
more about it. Uh, it's it's designed as an alternative
to the dvorate keyboard. It actually has it again as
(22:08):
you know, based on the keys that you want to strike,
and the frequency with which the letters occur. It has
to ease one for each hand because he appears so frequently. Interesting,
but it's supposed to, you know, make the key combinations
from hand to hand more efficient. I would definitely make
typing I E E E easier. True, not that we
(22:31):
write about them all that frequently, No, we just go I.
But those are just different keyboard layouts. And when we
were going to talk about different kinds of keyboards, like
the gaming keyboards, right, so there are gaming keyboards out there.
I really don't have a whole lot to say about them.
I mean, they're mainly they're just really a special kind
of control. Really, when you get down to it, well,
it's another way for it's another way for the keyboard
manufacturers to make money. Yeah, I mean here by another
(22:53):
eight dollar keyboard. Some of them are. Some of them
are designed in such a way so that it's easier
for you to reach certain keys, like the W A
S keys, which are often used in first person shooters
and other other games for moving your character around. Now,
on a standard keyboard, it might be a little cramp
to put your fingers there. You know, it's slowwle weird
because you're if you especially if you want to be
(23:14):
holding down all or have contact with all four keys
at the same time, you're gonna end up with a
cramped hand after about half an hour. UM. So a
lot of these keyboards just have a different spacing, um,
and they may be a little more reinforced. Some of
them have backlighting, um, you know, stuff that makes it
look a little fancier. In general, they're still very functional keyboards. Uh.
(23:34):
Some of them may have uh pre set macros where
you can, um, have things set up so that pushing
one button actually executes a series of commands, which you know,
a lot of games support that, and you can do
it on your own with a normal keyboard, but you
kind of have to know what you're doing. Some of
these kind of take that out of your you know,
out of your hands and do it automatically so you
(23:55):
don't have to actually, you know, sit there and follow
a set of instructions to pro graham your your macro's
so that you can be leaked. Um. I've never had
much use for or the gaming keyboards that much, but
then that's because I'm not a I'm not a big gamer. Um.
If I were, I probably would love one of those
there in general, I've heard good things about them from gamers,
(24:19):
but since I don't game often enough to be in there,
uh esteemed company, it's not something that I've ever invested in. Now,
if we want to talk about a real investment, well,
first let's talk about the first let's talk about the
major investment. Let's talk about the major league crazy investment.
Major investment would be Optimist Maximus. Yes, the O L
(24:39):
E ED or O lead keyboard from art limav. Yes,
it has keys that are each an individual display. And
you want to talk about for a keyboards or mapping
keys and pulling them off, you don't have to do
it because your keys can be anything you want them
to be, right, because each key is essentially a little Yeah,
it's a little display. So if you want to too,
(25:00):
if you somethingly wanted to type in the cyrillic alphabet,
you can tell your keyboard that that's what you want
and suddenly all of your English letters will change to
cyrillic letters. And hey, you know, at the bargain price
of fifteen on think geek dot com at the moment
they're out of stock. Yeah, I've seen they can. I
think the lowest I've seen is like fourteen fifty seven.
(25:21):
So we're talking around a thousand, five hundred bucks for
most places. For this keyboard. That's really really expensive. Now
that you might sit there and think like, wow, that's
got to be one of the most expensive keyboards out there,
why don't you take a little one of the most expensive.
But if you want to talk about a really expensive keyboard,
let's talk about fairlights z Energy keyboard. This thing costs
(25:43):
twenty eight grand. Now, when it came out, I saw
a lot of reports about twenty thousand dollar keyboard, and
you know, I actually wrote an article about how this
energy keyboard works, and uh, the headlines are a little
miss eating because you would think, like, who the heck
would pay twenty dollars for a keyboard? Well, it's not.
(26:05):
It's not just a keyboard. It's actually part of a
comprehensive audio and video engineering center. Okay, so it's it's
more like a it's more like a really complex audio
and video editing device as opposed to just a keyboard.
It actually has its own memory, it's got its own screen,
Like there's a screen built into the keyboard each key
(26:25):
just like optimist Maximus is its own screen. Um, you
can even if you wanted to display video through your keys.
I don't know why you would want to do that,
but you could. But you can create animated uh images
on your keys, so like, uh, maybe a flashing red
light when you're recording something, So one of your keys
is flashing red you know, Oh, that means that the
(26:47):
record button has been hit. We're actually recording this, Like
I have to ask Tyler all the time or Matt
or whoever is in here are we currently recording because
I kind of need to know if I have to
behave myself or not. Like that stops you. Yeah, well,
let's just say that we've had people ask us about
out takes. I'm just gonna tell you guys right now,
we don't really have any outtakes because when we make mistakes,
(27:08):
we kind of keep them in the show pretty much.
I mean some of you have pointed those out, but
um uh we do talk before and after the shows
and it's juicy and I'm sure you guys would all
love to hear that, but we don't record those. I
specifically request that we turned the recorder off for that,
um at any rate. So this twenty keyboard is really
(27:28):
for audio engineers and video engineers. It's not meant for
the average consumer. It's not meant for someone playing Doom
or Quake or Half Life two or anything like that.
It's meant for someone who's producing music videos or albums
or whatever and they need to have. Essentially a portable
studio is what it turns out to be. Yeah, Um,
are you done with this energy? Yeah? Well, I was
(27:51):
gonna say one other thing. It it can record up
to ninety It can do handle it to ninety six
channels for the base model. The top of the line
level two thirty channels. Okay, so when you think about
the Beatles recording their albums on four channels, yep, imagine
what they'd sound like with two and thirty channels. That's
(28:12):
a lot of ringo. So what were you going to say?
I was going to mention, um, another kind of keyboard
that's considerably less expensive than that. It's uh that John
Fuller wrote about the the laser virtual keyboard, right. Um,
Basically this isn't a keyboard at all, except it kind
of is. Um. It's a device that you can hook
(28:33):
up to uh while a computer or uh, you know,
certain types of other electronic devices that require keyboards and
UM basically uses a laser and it shines through what's
called a diffractive optical element UH. And with with that
and lenses, certain kinds of lenses, it projects an image
of a keyboard on say the desktop in front of you.
(28:57):
So in front of you where there was a blank table,
now you see the keys from a keyboard. UM, and
an infrared laser diode at the base UH shines a
beam of light parallel to the table surface, so that
when you when you type on you know, basically you're
drumming your fingers on the table in front of you
(29:17):
on the pictures of the select keys. UH. The complementary
metal oxide semiconductor that's CMOS looks at where your finger
is and determines the position relative to where it's supposed
to be and says, okay, well he's typing an S,
he's typing a G, he's typing an L. And then exactly, hey,
(29:38):
you know, maybe they're just transferring from a Dvorat keyboard
lamp anyway, UM, and it sends that information back to
the computer, and you know, the computer is using this
virtual keyboard to to do that. So but it's considerably
less expensive than this energy, Like you know, it's a
hundred and fifty dollars um. I don't no, I would
(30:00):
love to try. I've I've heard people say that it's
a neat idea, but that um that you know, it's
kind of weird to use it. I don't know if
that means that it's weird in the sense that since
you don't have the touch feedback, it just throws you off,
or you know, like because when you press the button,
there's something about that sense like it tells you that
you successfully press the button before you see that show
(30:20):
up on the screen. Thank you for the segue. What's
that one of the oddest things. I don't think it's
really that odd, but I think it's sort of odd
that one of the keyboards that's really really popular. Remember
those IBM keyboards that they used to make, the old
beige things and when you would hear somebody and they
would be really really loud, they had these really heavy
(30:42):
duty switches in them which made that loud noise. There
are people who absolutely love those things, are buying them refurbished,
And there's another company that's coming out with the same
thing called the DOSK keyboard, so it's it's specifically loud
and clackee on purpose. It is specifically loud and claque
on purpose. So you know you press that key well,
I mean, I cannot you know, a thin, rubbery membrane keyboard.
(31:04):
It is a big, thick, plastic, chunky thing with a
huge switch inside that clacks when you hit it. Well, again,
for for those of us who can type while looking
away from the screen, like often, I'll have someone come
up and talk to me, and I'll be in the
middle of typing a sense and I'll turn around. I'll
look at them while I'm still typing, which tends to
throw them off for some reason. Apparently that's creepy in
some way. I never really thought of it that way,
(31:24):
but yeah, you that could come in hand because you
could realize that, hey, I didn't actually hit that E
when I thought I hit the e. UM. Now, granted,
with a lot of autocorrect software, sometimes that's not really
necessary unless you're auto correct software is awful and keeps
on putting in words that you totally didn't mean to
have in there. Um, which does happen, and it's hilarious.
(31:45):
I am finished with keyboards. I think we are okay. Well,
then let's do a little quick listener mail. This listener
mail comes from Adrian and Adrian has hey, guys, love
your podcast. I'm planning to buy a computer, but I
want to know when Windows might be releasing their latest
operating system. Would you guys know when it might be out?
(32:07):
Thank you so much? Next week? Actually it's October twenty two,
um is the official release date, which, by the time
you hear this, may have been last week. We don't
know when when our podcast will be released, but people
are a lot of people have asked us this, so
there's chance that's already in stores now by the time
you hear this. But October twenty swod was the official
release date. UM. Thanks Adrian and if any of you
(32:30):
have any questions, concerns, criticisms, podcast suggestions, you can write us.
Our email address is tech stuff at how stuffworks dot com.
I do want to say that we talked about We
talked about the inventor of the Corty keyboard. We have
a special podcast, the Stuff of Genius, that has an
episode all about him. Indeed, so you should watch that.
Stuff of Genius is absolutely brilliant, very funny animation, to
(32:54):
great text. Yeah, you guys got to check that out.
And remember also at one pm Eastern one neusdays, Chris
and I host a live hooting Nanny. I mean a
live technology news podcast show. It's text stuff Live, vaguely
like a hooting nanny. Yeah. You can find all about
this hooting Nanny at our blogs. So go to house
stuff Works dot com and check it out. Crispy and
(33:16):
I will talk to you again really soon for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works dot com and be sure to check out
the new tech stuff blog now on the house stuff
Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
(33:36):
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
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Karah Preiss
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