HHHHHHHHHHHHHIII USOO5156475A United States Patent (19) 11 Patent Number: 5,156,475 Zilberman (45)

HHHHHHHHHHHHHIII USOO5156475A United States Patent (19) 11 Patent Number: 5,156,475 Zilberman (45) . Date of Patent: 6)ct. 20, 1992 (54) KEYBOARD DIVIDED BY CENTRAL 4,661,005 4/1987 Lahr .................................... 400/472 INVERTED T-SHAPED ENTRY-SPACE KEY FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS 76) Inventor: Arkady Zilberman, 1952 Lamarie 0284.007 9/1988 European Pat. Off. ............ 400/472 Dr., Powell, Ohio 43065 972465 10/1959 Fed. Rep. of Germany ...... 400/486 21 Appl. No.: 623,116 258785 3/1987 France ................................ 400/472 2122947 7/1984 United Kingdom ................ 400/472 22 Filedilled: Dec. 6, 1990 Primary Examiner-Eugene H. Eickholts int. Cli................................................ B41J5/08 Attorney, Agent, or Firm-Ilya Zborovsky 52 U.S. C. ....................................400/490,335/145R 400/472; 400/489; (57) ABSTRACT 58) Field of Search ............... 400/472, 473, 485, 486, A keyboard comprises a plurality of regular keys, and 400/489, 488, 490, 495; 235/145 R; 434/227, an inverted T-shaped key subdividing the regular keys 231 into two sections including one section for preferably left-hand operation and another section preferably for (56) References Cited right-hand operation. A keyboard further comprises a U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS trackball and/or two rollers requiring minimal hand 4,244,659 1/1981 Malt .................................... 400/486 movement in using them for mouse emulation. 4,564,751 1/1986 Alley et al. ... 400/473 4,579,470 4/1986 Casey .................................. 400/486 15 Claims, 5 Drawing Sheets SY2 aS 2AS SV2 U.S. Patent Oct. 20, 1992 Sheet 1 of 5 5,156,475 §E•’3. U.S. Patent Oct. 20, 1992 - Sheet 2 of 5 5,156,475 -U.S. Patent Oct. 20, 1992 Sheet 3 of 5 5,156,475 U.S. Patent Oct. 20, 1992 Sheet 4 of 5 5,156,475 U.S. Patent Oct. 20, 1992 Sheet 5 of 5 5,156,475 5,156,475 1. 2 cause in typing the hands must "hang' over the key KEYBOARD DIVIDED BY CENTRAL INVERTED board to allow the finger out-stretching in the plane and T-SHAPED ENTRY-SPACE KEY direction which does not coincide with the natural least constrained contraction-extension movement offingers. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 5 As professionals and managers are generally not willing The present invention relates generally to keyboards, to undergo formal keyboard training, the computer is of . which may be used with any machines for communicat less benefit to them than it could be. ing, storing, processing or retrieving information, such The cursor movement keys of the extended as computers, typewriters, telegraphs, type composing QWERTY keyboard give very limited movement capa machines, siphering machines, etc. 10 bility. A single press moves the cursor one place up, When the typewriter became a commercial success in down or sideways, as a king moves in chess. A press and the 1890's after a long history of experiment, a variety hold brings into action after a delay of about half a of keyboard layouts were in use. Some machines used second an auto-repeat function which moves the cursor the type-bar mechanisms which later became universal at a fixed, rather slow speed in the chosen direction, but for wholly mechanical typewriters. Because the early 15 still moving it as a rook. Moves between two arbitrary type-bar mechanisms were liable to jam if adjacent keys points have to be made as a series of zig-zags. The cur were struck in quick succession, the letters were ar sor cannot move as a queen. The fixed auto-repeat ranged on the keyboard to avoid such sequences. The speed, necessarily a comprise, is time-consuming on resulting so-called "Universal" keyboard, now gener long course moves and yet fast enough to lead to over ally known as QWERTY from its letter sequence, is 20 shoots if the user is not very careful. To overcome these inefficient in human terms, as only 50% of letters struck limitations, auxiliary devices such as the mouse, used to lie on the most used row, and the fingers must make generate XY coordinates, is being adopted for cursor many reaches to the other rows. A common standard movement and for graphical work. The ease of cursor keyboard layout, developed with the objective to ex movement with these devices is particularly important clude the type-bar jams, proved a commercial necessity 25 in supporting machine languages which exploit to the and has become the standard for all languages written full the human preference for communicating by show with the Latin alphabet. ing rather than telling. These auxiliary devices have With the advent of electronic computers the however the disadvantage in textual work that one QWERTY keyboard has been enlarged by the addition hand must be moved frequently between the keyboard of a ten key numerical keypad as used on calculators, 30 duplicating the ten numeric keys on the top row of the and the mouse, which is disorienting and time-consum typewriter layout to increase the speed of numeric data ing. entry, at least four cursor movement keys, and a grow A further disadvantage of the conventional keyboard ing number of other machine function keys having fixed is the high risk of accidentally initiating computer ac or program assigned meanings. Leading computer man 35 tion by pressing the "Enter key before one means to, ufacturers are now supply universal word and data due to its placement at the front of the keyboard next to processing keyboards having over 100 keys. the right shift key. The occasional proposals in the data Many investors have endeavored to improve the processing art for thumb keys, operating in a plane typewriter keyboard layout. The best known work is differing from that of the other finger keys, are related that of Dvorak et al, who described in 1932 a letter 40 to the unused strength and agility of thumbs which arrangement optimized in terms of carefully chosen belong to the strongest fingers which are least active criteria including letter frequencies and the relative over the keyboard. strength and agility of the fingers. Other inventors have SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION worked on the shape of the keyboard, variously propos ing key rows curved to match the natural arc of the 45 Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention fingers, multiple key rows disposed in double curved to provide a keyboard which eliminates the disadvan bowl shapes to ease the reaches, thumb keys oriented tages of the prior art. nearly at right angles to the fingers keys to better ex More particularly, it is an object of the present inven ploit the strength and agility of the thumbs, and a gen tion to provide a keyboard which is ergonomically eral outward tilt of the two sides of the keyboard for the SO designed to take maximum advantage of the shape, comfort of wrists. The gain in speed from any of these dexterity, and strength of the hands and fingers so that performance optimized keyboards appears limited, and the majority of the fingers on both hands are always is tentatively estimated in Siebel (1972) at no more than positioned on the home keys, requiring less efforts in 10%. outreaching to the other keys. The speed of 40-60 words per minute expected from 55 In keeping with these objects and with others which a competent typist requires so-called "touch-typing, will become apparent hereinafter, one feature of the that is reading manuscript while simultaneously operat present invention resides, briefly stated, in a keyboard ing the keyboard with only tectile and audible feedback. which has a plurality of regular keys forming substan To do this, the stimulus-response bonds which link tially two rectangular fields, subdivided by an inverted letters and common group of letters to the finger move 60 T-shaped key into two sections: one for preferably left ments, which type them, must be thoroughly learnt. hand operation, and another for preferably right-hand These bonds are sequence dependent, and the reaches operation. over the rows and columns make them complex. Un The main benefit of the keyboards subdivided by the trained persons such as the journalists, authors, profes inverted T-shaped key into two section is that it facili sionals and managers who now increasingly use com 65 tates touch-typing with hands essentially fixed on a puters without the intervention of specialists keyboard desk. operators are unable to key at more than about 15 words In accordance with another feature of the present per minute, even with much practical experience, be invention: rows of keys are located on a tilted flat plane 5,156,475 3 4. or on a concave cylindrical surface. The axis of curva As can be seen from FIG, 3 the key-columns are ture of the cylindrical surface intersects a vertical cen arranged in parallel lines. The keys or more particularly tral line of the inverted T-shaped key at 75°-90° angle the key caps have cylindrical top depressions, and the from the left and from the right, respectively. keys are arranged in parallel grooves located on the Still another feature of the present invention is that concave surface mentioned hereabove. the columns of the keys are arranged in parallel The upper part of the central key performing Enter grooves, which are located on the flat tilted surface or function is located between the preferentially left-hand on the concave cylindrical surface. and right-hand sections. The lower part of the central In accordance with a further feature of the present key performing "Space' function, partly extends to the invention a trackball is located at the keyboard top part, O area below the left-hand and the right-hand sections.

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