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