[HN Gopher] A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset
___________________________________________________________________
A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset
Author : zdw
Score : 308 points
Date : 2025-03-23 15:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.righto.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.righto.com)
| kens wrote:
| Author here if there are any questions...
| gargablegar wrote:
| Thank you for this, wonderful break down of some amazing
| history. I have watched that demo many many times in my pursuit
| of human computer interface thinking.
|
| I often wondered what happened to this piece of hardware... I
| still hold a deep belief that our current input methods are
| flawed(as amazing as they are) and we are in need of another
| leap forward.
|
| Anyway great read - thank you again.
| xkriva11 wrote:
| How did Engelbart render black text on a white background
| during his 1968 Demo, considering that the display technology
| at the time was based on vector CRTs, which typically produced
| glowing light rather than dark areas?
| kens wrote:
| Output was displayed on 5" CRTs. High-resolution TV cameras
| (875-line) transmitted the CRT output to 17" monitors at each
| work station. By flipping a switch, the video could be
| inverted, so you could get either black lines on a light
| background or white lines on a black background. In other
| words, Engelbart invented dark mode :-)
| xkriva11 wrote:
| Crazy. This clearly demonstrates their focus on output,
| even at the expense of cost-effectiveness.
|
| Was TREE-META directly linked to META-II?
| kens wrote:
| As far as I can tell, TREE-META and META II were
| unrelated compiler compilers.
| kragen wrote:
| I vaguely remember the published description of TREE-META
| crediting META-II, though I might be confabulating that.
| More broadly, I don't think any compiler-compiler is
| unrelated to META-II.
| kragen wrote:
| Plausibly someone else in Engelbart's lab, or a group of
| people, invented it. He always complained about people
| assigning him credit for the whole team's output.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Hey, great to see this, thank you so much, Ken!
|
| I'm lucky to own an original Engelbart mouse and chord keyset
| too, and I want to make usable replicas by 3d scanning them,
| making 3d printable models, and embedding metal and electronic
| parts so they work via bluetooth!
|
| The first step is to take it apart, measure and weigh the
| pieces, 3d scan it, and make a realistic 3d printable all
| plastic model (like an easy-to-print toy), but then refine it
| to make a high quality hybrid version with the exact same
| weight and feel and materials and electronics using resin
| printing and off the shelf hardware like the wheel, so it feels
| as realistic as possible and actually works!
|
| I think reproducing the actual weight and feel of the original
| is really important, the klunky feel of the wheel attached to
| the potentiometer hitting the rotation limit, how it scrapes
| across the table, etc. It's really amazing to hold and feel in
| your own hand, and it belongs in a hands-on museum like the
| Exploratorium, but it would quickly get destroyed. So it would
| be great if anyone who wants could 3d print their own quick and
| easy plastic replica, or assemble their own high quality
| functional replica too.
|
| I want to release the simple model and detailed plans to make
| your own for free, and think it would be a great kit or pre-
| assembled gadget that the Computer History Museum could sell in
| the gift store.
|
| It would also be cool to include an accelerometer and gyro in
| it so it would also work as a gestural game controller -- why
| not: it would be so cheap and easy to add!
|
| Here are some parts I'm considering using, but I'm new to this
| stuff -- what do people with more experience think?
| Microcontroller: ESP32-S3 module (USB + Bluetooth capabilities)
| Motion Sensor: MPU6050 6-axis accelerometer/gyroscope 2x
| 10KO potentiometers for X/Y tracking wheels 3x tactile
| buttons with pull-up resistors 3.7V LiPo battery
| (350-500mAh) TP4056 charging module USB-C connector
| (for both charging and wired mode)
|
| I'd love to discuss the project with you, a free open non-
| profit labor of love, and I hope we can collaborate! I just
| invested in a Bambu 3d printer and Raptor 3d scanner just for
| this project, so I'm ready to get started scanning and
| printing. Please drop me an email at: don@donhopkins.com
| bch wrote:
| Hi Don. I think this stuff is great, and applaud your work,
| so don't think of this as a slight (depending on the answer,
| of course): how _practical_ is this? Again, if the answer is
| approximately "not at all practical", that's fair, but I
| guess I could also see it fitting somewhere on a spectrum
| like emacs vs vi, QWERTY vs Dvorak, etc...
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| People preserve past technology for various reasons, but I
| have always appreciated the investment lessons about what
| persists... and what faded away.
|
| For example, most modern architectures were not the best
| choice, and have pigeonholed both AMD and Intel for
| decades. =3
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I'm doing it for the looks and feels. Making it public and
| open so others can take a look and feel free. (Ha ha, I got
| a billion of 'em!) ;)
|
| It does have a distinctive visual look and physical feel.
| And while it's not as sleek or ergonomic as the latest
| Logitech mouse (who gave him an office at their
| headquarters from 1992 to 2007), it's pretty great to
| actually touch and hold -- just to grasp firsthand how far
| input devices have come.
|
| (Okay, now I've got nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine
| hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-something
| of 'em!)
|
| 1) Historic Firsts: The Mouse
|
| https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/162/
|
| >Logitech celebrates "ONE BILLION MICE SOLD!" making
| headlines in 2008. See their press release, blog post, and
| billionth mouse celebration page with links to press kits,
| fun facts, and timelines. The event coincided with our 40th
| anniversary celebration of Doug's landmark demo, titled
| "Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing". Enjoy
| the following timeline from Logitech's celebrations.
|
| 1.0e+9) Logitech Ships Billionth Mouse. Coincides with
| Fortieth Anniversary of First Computer Mouse Public:
|
| https://ir.logitech.com/press-releases/press-release-
| details...
|
| >"What a wonderful coincidence that the leading mouse
| manufacturer has announced such a significant milestone in
| the same month that we celebrate Doug Engelbart's legendary
| public debut of the computer mouse," said Curt Carlson,
| president and chief executive officer of SRI International.
| "Logitech's product innovations support Engelbart's vision
| of human-computer tools for interactive and collaborative
| work."
|
| [?]) Doug Engelbart obituary:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/04/doug-
| enge...
|
| >After that, Engelbart set up the tiny Bootstrap Institute
| with his daughter Christina, which survives as the Doug
| Engelbart Institute, providing a useful history of his life
| and times. From 1992 to 2007, Engelbart was given an office
| at Logitech's headquarters, before finally returning to SRI
| some 30 years after he had left it.
| bch wrote:
| I might be misunderstanding, but are you talking solely
| about the most here? I'm mostly curious about the chorded
| "keyboard"(?) as an input device - have you spent time
| with it as a daily driver? How does it compare to a
| traditional keyboard? I would guess a keyboard would be
| easier for a beginner, because ~1 key per symbol, and the
| keycaps are all printed (though I'm sure many of us
| remember our untrained selves scanning the entire
| keyboard intently, looking for whatever letter had eluded
| us) - so chorded input would be more of a learning wall
| than a learning curve, but once that's achieved... is
| chorded input ~100% speed of a QWERTY kb, or 10%, or
| 150%? Is it more or less tiring, physically and mentally?
| Very interested in your experience.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| >I want to make usable replicas by 3d scanning them
|
| Cool, the artifacts should be preserved for people studying
| new haptics device designs.
|
| The MPU6050 is not a great IMU, but the cost might be your
| best option.
|
| >USB-C connector
|
| One can force the interface into legacy USB 2.0 HID mode, and
| I would highly recommend that approach if you are excluding a
| USBC device PMIC. The TP4056 also have some weirdness about
| entering charge modes, and exiting trickle mode.
|
| Would recommend contacting some museum staff if additional
| hardware is missing:
|
| https://vintagegeek.com/
|
| Best of luck =3
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Just the kind of advice and wisdom I was hoping to hear,
| thank you! What would your ideal pick of hardware
| components be? Cost is not a major factor, since the cost
| of manufacturing a high quality durable case and sourcing
| the other materials will probably overwhelm the cost of the
| electronics. Universal usability and battery life and
| rechargeability are quite important though. So no
| "different thinking" charging cable ports on the bottom,
| pfft!
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| > What would your ideal pick of hardware components be?
|
| In general, cheap 3.3v based devices just use disposable
| 2x AA battery with a reasonably good LDO regulator, as
| they do not burn a lot of power that 2000mAh can last a
| long time. For a Bluetooth device, I would just leave the
| USB features/port/cable off to save on the design cost,
| and the sanity of DIY folks going cross-eyed trying to
| get a 0.5mm contact-pitch plug soldered. lol
|
| The IMU chips all have trade-offs, but I usually prefer
| an i2c chip with interrupt event pin (wake-from-sleep or
| sample-ready interrupt.) Also, many modern gyro chips
| have pre-filters built right into the chip itself, and
| can save a lot of cycles/DSP mcu side.
|
| Not sure about the development state of the ESP32
| Bluetooth library, but these chips are generally not
| known for their power efficiency or accurate a2d
| functions. If I recall, last time I chose a nordic
| semiconductor chip because of the power efficiency, and
| everything else was unavailable.
|
| Best of luck =3
| jdboyd wrote:
| I would suggest being sure to use a cpu platform well
| supported by ZMK to make your HID software easier. The
| esp32-s3 doesn't appear to have Bluetooth support in ZMK yet.
| People who want Bluetooth support are being encouraged to use
| the nrf52 platform. People who want usb only might be better
| with a rp2040 as there is better support in ZMK for that
| platform than anything esp32.
| ChrisGammell wrote:
| I always drop everything to read when there are new articles.
| Keep up the great work Ken!
| thakoppno wrote:
| Are there any opportunities for the local community to help
| preserve this history?
|
| There's a new development planned for the SRI site and I was
| hoping there'd be some honorary for that hallowed ground.
| kens wrote:
| Christina Engelbart is working to preserve the history at the
| Doug Engelbart Institute: https://www.dougengelbart.org/
| kragen wrote:
| Thanks for writing this!
|
| You misspelled "eidophor".
|
| Brad Neuberg (the founder of coworking) worked with Doug about
| 15 years ago to hook up one of these keysets to a then-current
| computer to use Augment. Any idea what happened to that work?
| bsindcatr wrote:
| It's amazing to me not only how much things haven't changed (many
| still use mouse, joystick, keyboard) but how much things _have_
| changed.
|
| A dedicated keyset for frequent functions like this is certainly
| cool, and there was a time where it was cool to have num pad and
| function keys, but then most users started to use modifier keys
| (shift, ctrl, option, later added cmd) on their keyboards. We
| started with joysticks, then mice, then some trackballs, haptic
| joystick, light pen, touchpad, then haptic touch screen. And we
| have some voice interaction, then some immersive VR and augmented
| reality, then interaction with AI that can hear and see things,
| and we have some movement in brain interfacing over the years.
|
| What is next?
|
| (I apologize for leaving many things out and getting them in the
| wrong order. Just going on memory.)
| andrehacker wrote:
| Fascinating read as always Ken. It seems that the concept of a
| "Chorded Keyboard" from Douglas then spawned several relatively
| successful successors later on:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard
|
| Growing up in the Netherlands in the 80s it was hard to not be
| aware of the "Velotype": it had more keys and supposedly made it
| easier to learn the "chords".
|
| Your reference to the book Nerds 2.0.1 is great, the book is a
| companion to the excelent PBS 3-part series from 1998
|
| https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection&query=Nerd...
| rwmj wrote:
| Back in the mid '80s our school was given a small number of
| Microwriter chorded keyboards
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter) for our BBC Micro
| lab. Even as 12 year olds we were already crazy good touch-
| typists, so the Microwriter felt very clunky and unintuitive to
| us. I don't know what the lesson is from that. Just because it
| seems a good idea doesn't mean that it is. Or typewriter-style
| keyboards have survived over a century and a half for a reason.
| Cpoll wrote:
| I'm not convinced either of those are the lessons. I think
| the reason for the keyboard's success is that it has a smooth
| learning curve. A neophyte can hunt-and-peck with a keyboard.
| Not so with a chorded keyboard.
| amoshebb wrote:
| but then it kinda stops, couldn't we layer on chords as
| well, you can peck "t h e" or just mash "eth" and both
| would result in "the", or maybe some sort of english pinyin
| where only the first few chars are needed?
| rwmj wrote:
| Predictive text? But it's also an example of an
| incremental improvement that someone could experiment
| with to see if it works. Much easier than having to
| prototype entirely new hardware (especially in the 80s,
| in an era before cheap additive prototyping).
| girvo wrote:
| I mean in some ways that is what modern predictive text
| is, right? I watch others rely on it incredibly heavily,
| no correcting mistakes at all just rely on the
| autocorrect to solve it, and it works well
|
| Or swipe-typing, as another version of that idea. Move in
| the rough area of the key, and rely on prediction
| aphit wrote:
| This is precisely what CharaChorder is.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CharaChorder
| rwmj wrote:
| Yes, that's a really good point.
| jhbadger wrote:
| In the 1990s chorded keyboards were "popular" in regard to
| wearable computing. People like Steve Mann would give talks
| where he demonstrated how he could use his wearable computer
| (basically a laptop he strapped to himself with a clunky
| goggle-mounted display) that he controlled with a small chorded
| keyboard he operated with one hand. Obviously, a decade later
| with smartphones this looked pretty silly (if it didn't already
| in the 1990s) but some people really did think this was the
| future at the time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor)
| nine_k wrote:
| The killer feature of a chorded mechanical (not on-screen)
| keyboard for me is that one can use it without having to look
| at it. To literally touch-type (not necessarily text).
|
| This is why such keyboards are used where this advantage is
| material, e.g. in jet fighters.
| makeset wrote:
| You can learn to touch-type on any keyboard and never ever
| look at it (actually gets confusing to look), and many
| where you never have to move your hands around either,
| before you need to get anywhere near chordal.
| diggan wrote:
| > (actually gets confusing to look)
|
| As someone who grew up with a Swedish keyboard layout,
| switched to US when I got a job as a programmer but live
| in Spain so most keyboards have Spanish physical layouts
| while I use US software layouts: yes, this is very true
| for a lot of us :)
| nine_k wrote:
| True, especially for ergonomic keyboards.
|
| The upside of a chorded keyboard is that it can input a
| lot while using just one hand, and can be fixed relative
| just to that hand (imagine e.g. typing while holding a
| bike handlebar, or, again, an aircraft control stick).
| Normal touch-typing requires active use of two hands, and
| a steady surface.
| tdeck wrote:
| The most successful chorded keyboard of all time is the
| Perkins keyboard used to produce braille. If you already
| know braille, it's much quicker to learn than touch typing
| on a regular keyboard because they keys correspond directly
| to dots in the braille character cell.
|
| And surprisingly, this advantage of not having to look at
| it also applies blind smartphone users, who can use an on-
| screen Perkins keyboard as an input method. The touch
| targets are large enough that you can use it without seeing
| them once you get used to where they are.
|
| https://www.perkins.org/resource/using-braille-input-your-
| id...
| robin_reala wrote:
| Not that I've seen a blind user using Perkins in real
| life, but the videos I've seen all seem to demonstate the
| "screen away" mode referenced in this article: turn the
| phone away from you but cradled in two hands, position
| your fingers on the screen in roughly the correct
| position, then you're ready to start typing. To a blind
| user, the screen becomes the operating mechanism, and the
| perception mechanism is typically headphones.
| tdeck wrote:
| Yes exactly. It's more of a way to make use of many of
| the other pre-existing functions of the smartphone
| without having to have a purpose built device. Although
| there is at least one hardware addon i'm aware of for
| blind users:
|
| https://www.iamhable.com/en-am
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| There's a 1990s Alan Alda video interviewing Thad Starner
| with these elements: https://youtu.be/X7DM1mT8r7c
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > In the 1990s chorded keyboards were "popular" in regard to
| wearable computing. ... Obviously, a decade later with
| smartphones this looked pretty silly (if it didn't already in
| the 1990s) but some people really did think this was the
| future at the time.
|
| Well, we have portable computers with chorded key-sets now:
| we just call them handheld consoles instead. I'm quite sure
| that the button set on something like Valve's Steam Deck or
| ASUS's ROG-Ally consoles could be repurposed for some sort of
| reasonably ergonomic chorded-text input.
| totetsu wrote:
| I guess this was an inspiration for this character
| https://lain.wiki/wiki/Nezumi
| jarpineh wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if chorded keyboard would be better for
| controlling the computer and keeping better posture against RSI
| issues. Not to mention more compact space compared to full
| keyboard. I seem to remember from a recording of the demo (and
| few writings on subject) that the keyset and mouse were used
| together for more powerful effect than either one alone.
|
| What I haven't found out is how well a multilingual writer could
| use these. Do the chords rely on properties of particular
| language, like English. Does the chord order follow from how
| often you write letter a instead of x. Would another language be
| adaptable to same chords, or do you need to make an optimized
| version?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Douglas Engelbart used a straightforward binary encoding scheme
| for the chord keyset:
|
| Engelbart Explains Binary Text Input. Douglas Engelbart
| explains to co-inventor, Valerie Landau, and some blogger how
| binary can be used for text input.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB_dLeEasL8
|
| Engelbart: Think about if you took each finger, and wrote a one
| on this one, a two on this one, a four on this one, and a
| sixteen on this one. And every combination would lead clear up
| to sixty three.
|
| And so writing here like this the alphabet: A... B... C... D.
| E. F. G, H, I, JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43454343
|
| The commercially available "TapXR" input device also functions
| as a mouse and gestural pointing device! It's a wearable tap
| glove that functions as both a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I
| haven't tried it yet though, but it looks really cool.
|
| https://www.tapwithus.com/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdm8FcsKeoM
|
| A WRISTBAND THAT REPLACES Your Keyboard, Mouse & Handheld
| Controller TapXR was designed to help humans adapt to the next
| generation of personal computing.
|
| A Unified Way To Interact With Your PC, Smartphone, Tablet,
| SmartTV, Projector, VR, AR & XR
|
| 80+ Words Per Minute
|
| Input up to 10 characters a second with just one hand or go
| even faster with two.
|
| 150+ Customizable Commands
|
| Remap any finger combination into your favorite shortcuts,
| triggers, key-binds and commands
|
| 2500+ Tap Layouts
|
| Enjoy thousands of user-created Language, Utility, Coding,
| Production & Gaming TapMaps - or make your own!
|
| 8 Hours of Battery Life
|
| Get a full day of input on a single charge. Only 1 hour to
| recharge from zero to full!
|
| ----
|
| My previous post about an earlier version from about 7 years
| ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17122717
|
| DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | prev | next [-]
|
| I just ran across a new device called "Tap", a wearable tap
| glove that functions as both a bluetooth keyboard and mouse!
|
| https://www.tapwithus.com/
|
| I've had any "hands on" experience with the Tap, but it looks
| very cool, like a modern version of Douglas Engelbart's and
| Valerie Landau's HandWriter glove!
|
| I asked Valerie Landau about it (wondering if it was her
| company), but she hadn't heard of it before.
|
| They have an iOS, Android and Unity3D SDK that appeared on
| github recently, so you can look at the code to see how it
| works:
|
| https://github.com/TapWithUs
|
| Does this look legit? Has anybody tried it?
|
| If it works as advertised, I'd love to develop TapPieMenus that
| you can use in VR, mobile, desktop computers, and everywhere
| else!
|
| I'm excited about the possibility of creating easy to use, fast
| and reliable pie menus for Tap that users can fully customize,
| and use with one hand in the same way that Douglass Engelbart
| described you could do with two hands using a mouse and a
| chorded keyboard:
|
| >"Well, when you're doing things with the mouse, you can be in
| parallel, doing things that take character input. And then the
| system we had, it actually gave you commands with characters,
| too. Like you had a D and a W, and it says, "you want to delete
| a word", and pick on which word, and click, it goes. M W would
| be move a word. Click on this one, click on that one, that one
| could move over there. Replace character, replace word,
| transpose words. All those things you could do with your left
| hand giving commands, and right hand doing it."
|
| It would be cool to have some tactile feedback, so the tutorial
| could train you to type out letters by vibrating your fingers
| with a piezo buzzer or something, and maybe it could even
| secretly spell out silent invisible messages to you while you
| were wearing it! And you could feel a different silent finger
| "ring tone" depending on who was calling you, then tap to
| answer to discard the call, or stroke with a TapPieMenu to send
| a canned reply.
|
| enobrev on May 22, 2018 | parent | next [-]
|
| LinusTechTips posted a decent review of the Tap a few weeks
| ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/8za_4g5zCOM
| jarpineh wrote:
| Whoa. Thank you for the info dump. I'll see about making use
| of these.
|
| That Tap device has moved from fingers to wrist, I see. Sadly
| it's out of stock. Plus getting niche devices outside US is
| expensive and warranty probably doesn't work.
|
| [1] https://www.tapwithus.com/product/tap-xr/
|
| Edit: that LTT video makes a good case for the device, if
| only in typical 'tube fashion.
| rhet0rica wrote:
| As Don Hopkins sort-of says--the original chording keyboard
| (and most later units) just had you inputting a binary number,
| which would be added to 64 to get an ASCII codepoint. No
| attempt was made to optimize for letter frequencies in English
| at this stage of design--A was one key (00001) but E was two
| (00101).
|
| Engelbart's style of chording keyboard barely escaped the
| Anglosphere. But a related invention, the stenographic
| keyboard, did; these are used for court reporting and live
| television captioning. They introduce a very different strategy
| for inputting text--operators of these input one full syllable
| at a time, phonetically, and the machine interprets the
| pronunciation according to a dictionary; thus in English the
| most common errors are homophones, which can be revised later
| from context. It requires quite a lot of training and practice
| to be proficient with them, and they are extremely language-
| specific.
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Braille typewriters are also very much like Stenography,
| except Braille is actually designed to replace reading &
| writing rather than transcribing speech.
|
| Though Braille does use two dots for E and one for A, with
| mostly the same letter frequency in both it's native French
| and English.
|
| Also very much surprised his keyboard didn't fit into either
| ASCII nor EBCDIC encoding. Granted, both of those barely
| existed at the time but still.
| jarpineh wrote:
| Yeah, I have probably conflated the two technologies
| somewhere along the way. And if I had read all the way to the
| footnotes of the original article I'd have found the keyset's
| chords. They do are counting in straight binary, going from
| a-z in order. Add mouse buttons for modes to get uppercase,
| numbers and what not. Interesting really that such a simple
| scheme worked.
| ipv6ipv4 wrote:
| I would hazard a guess that it would make RSI worse because it
| minimizes the kinds of hand motions to operate it. Alleviate
| RSI with a keyboard by constantly changing the position of your
| hands on the keyboard - the exact opposite of touch typing
| dogma. Pecking at your keyboard is healthier.
| jarpineh wrote:
| I'm no health expert, only an expert practitioner of my
| hands. Mostly I keep changing keyboards and positions. That
| small chorded keyset can be set to more natural positions and
| moved at will to wherever you can reach. You ostensibly don't
| need to even look at it. I'd assume you would be looking
| between the chord sheet for directions and what you're
| actually writing... A device like this Tap thing, which is
| attached to your fingers or wrist, allows even more freedom.
|
| As for mouse, well, I guess a trackball is easier to move
| about, stick to chair arm or something. Touchpad might work
| also, but you require more estate for precision and gestures.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Doug Engelbart's advice to a young software developer [video]
| (youtube.com)
|
| 183 points by DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | hide | past | favorite
| | 39 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121629
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA
|
| Valerie Landau interviewed by Martin Wasserman
|
| DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | prev | next [-]
|
| I found this incredibly interesting stuff on Valerie Landau's
| youtube channel of Douglass Engelbart, her mentor. The videos
| have apparently been viewed only a few times, but they deserve
| much more attention, because the ideas presented are so important
| and relevant today!
|
| She was a long time friend and collaborator with Doug Engelbart,
| and she was responsible for transferring the 1968 film of The
| Mother of All Demos from film to video so it could be preserved.
| She tracked him down and interviewed him, and after airing the
| interview, he asked her to help him articulate his vision to
| share with the world, which she's been working on since then.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/islandeweller/videos
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Landau
|
| Valerie Landau is an American designer, author and educator. She
| serves as Director of Assessment at Samuel Merritt University
| where she designed a software application that facilitates
| analysis and assessment of how effectively an organization is
| meeting their goals and objectives at course, program and
| institutional levels.
|
| She has filed two patents along with her colleague and mentor
| Douglas Engelbart. Their most recent patent (filed April 2010)
| describes multitouch interface for chorded text entry. The new
| patent is inspired by Engelbart's early work developing the
| Chorded keyboard. They also released an application for the
| iPhone for chorded texting called "TipTapSpeech".
|
| Engelbart and Landau also collaborated on writing the book "The
| Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart" along with
| co-author Eileen Clegg.
|
| Landau is also a co-founder of Program for the Future, a non-
| profit organization that promotes Engelbart's vision of
| Collective Intelligence. She also is author of the seminal book
| on online education "Developing an Effective Online Course" and
| earned the "Online Pioneer" award.
|
| Landau, also known for her work in multimedia at Round World
| Media and for her work mentoring students in a three-year project
| studying and applying the Engelbart Hypothesis. and created an
| online archive of Engelbart related events and videos.
|
| She is an instructional and interaction designer and has worked
| on many award-winning projects, educational games and online
| courses.
|
| In addition, she leads high level research delegations to Cuba.
|
| Valerie Landau interviewed by Martin Wasserman
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA
|
| ----
|
| Engelbart Explains Binary Text Input. Douglas Engelbart explains
| to co-inventor, Valerie Landau, and some blogger how binary can
| be used for text input.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB_dLeEasL8
|
| Engelbart: Think about if you took each finger, and wrote a one
| on this one, a two on this one, a four on this one, and a sixteen
| on this one. And every combination would lead clear up to sixty
| three.
|
| And so writing here like this the alphabet: A... B... C... D. E.
| F. G, H, I, JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!
|
| ----
|
| Engelbart Using HandWriter. Douglas Engelbart demonstrates early
| prototype of The HandWriter with Valerie Landau.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5wAD2aji3Q
|
| Q: So whose ideas was the glove?
|
| Engelbart: I invented actually a separate keyset with the five
| keys, and her idea, you can make a glove to do that.
|
| Q: And what's the advantage of using a five key chording system?
|
| Engelbart: Well, when you're doing things with the mouse, you can
| be in parallel, doing things that take character input.
|
| And then the system we had, it actually gave you commands with
| characters, too.
|
| Like you had a D and a W, and it says, "you want to delete a
| word", and pick on which word, and click, it goes. M W would be
| move a word.
|
| Click on this one, click on that one, that one could move over
| there. Replace character, replace word, transpose words.
|
| All those things you could do with your left hand giving
| commands, and right hand doing it.
|
| ----
|
| iChord: Clips from video of Eric Matsuno & Valerie Landau showing
| their new iPhone app to Douglas Engelbart. To Douglas C Engelbart
| and Bill English, and to Karen Engelbart, Roberta English and
| Mary Coppernoll. Present in spirit but not in molecules were:
| Evan Schaffer and Dr. Robert Stephenson.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XXdnu5n9vI
|
| So we're going to be able to be configurable for whoever's hand.
| [...] Go ahead and give it a try: so swiping it down puts it in
| the history, and swiping it left takes the last ...
|
| ----
|
| Andres Types His Name
|
| Andres writing his name on TipTap late on a Saturday night. I
| arrived home after a party and found him typing on TipTapSpeech.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WI88q7coEY
|
| ----
|
| This final silent video is chock full of photos and memories of
| Douglass Engelbart's friends and family, drawings, whiteboards,
| posters and brainstorming sessions!
|
| Memories with Douglas Engelbart: Photos from my work with Douglas
| Engelbart creating a Educational Networked Improvement Community
| Engelbart and working with Eileen Clegg on the writing of the
| book the Engelbart Hypothesis: Diaglogs with Douglas Engelbart.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPnsWKikS_w
| DonHopkins wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17122591
|
| DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | root | parent | next [-]
|
| I'll write a blog post about it soon, but I was hoping to
| benefit from other people's comments and links from discussing
| it here first. (You could accuse me of "crowd sourcing" my blog
| post, but I'd like to think of it as applying collective
| intelligence! ;) ) "The key thing about all the world's big
| problems is that they have to be dealt with collectively. If we
| don't get collectively smarter, we're doomed." -Douglass
| Engelbart, Intelligence in the Internet Age, New York Times,
| 9/19/05
|
| https://collectiveiq.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/great-doug-eng...
|
| Or as the great philosopher Linda Richman said:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJkANps0Qw&feature=youtu.be...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121632
|
| DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | prev | next [-]
|
| Valerie Landau interviewed by Martin Wasserman
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA
|
| Q: Some people will have to change their normal method of
| thinking?
|
| A: I think today, Aday really summed it up, that one of the
| things about collective intelligence means that we really have
| to start looking at ways that we can collectively share
| knowledge. And one of the problems with that is there are no
| good tools for sharing massive quantities of knowledge. So it's
| very hard to stay on top of things. So Doug's methodology
| creates maps and new ways of displaying data that we have not
| explored. So that we can really see large amounts of data,
| large amounts of knowledge, put them into structured arguments,
| so what he means by structure -- and maps, so that people can
| literally see what exists now and create very rapidly stragies
| -- both long term strategic planning, as well as tactical
| planning -- to address the issues that are confronting us.
|
| Q: Does this assume that if people have the same information
| they'll all come to the same conclusions?
|
| A: No, not at all. What it means that you will be able to look
| at data and make intelligent conclusions based on the best data
| we have currently. Because right now there is a lot of good
| data that is currently not available to the people who are
| making the decisions. He was saying that this was a dynamic
| knowledge repository and it was about allowing people to have
| an intelligence quotient. In other words, he saud that the
| infrastructure that you have to support a society determines
| the capability of that society. Just because we have all these
| capable tools doesn't necessarily mean that we'll behave
| intelligently, but it does allow us the chance to behave
| intelligently. So by improving our infrastructure, we're
| improving our intelligence QUOTIENT, not our actual
| intelligence. Just like the same people who are intelligent
| sometimes make bad choices, even though they're capable of
| making a better choice.
|
| Q: Now you say that Doug was interested in solving the most
| urgent problems of humanity. What type of problems was he
| referring to?
|
| A: He was definitely referring to things like Global Warming,
| issues around water, food, hunger, war, corruption was very
| high on Doug's list. He also followed very closely the work of
| the Millinenium Project, and so often times he would cite
| whatever they had cited. He would often cite those same issues.
|
| Q: Do you think his vision was going to become a reality at
| some point?
|
| A: I think yes, if I didn't I don't think I would have spend
| the last 30 years following it.
|
| Q: What did you find most impressive about him as a person?
|
| A: His humility. He was such a humble man, and his
| steadfastness of keeping his vision. Often times leaders like
| Doug, who many people call a prophet... In our society, we tend
| to think of the leaders as these sort of charismatic, ambitious
| people, and I think that Doug really broke that mold, in that
| he was a very humble, really shy person.
|
| Q: Do you have any last minute comments or observations about
| him to finish up. Or a good anecdote?
|
| A: I think -- I wanted to say one thing that Doug told me many
| years ago. And this is really for the software developers out
| there. Once, this was in the 90's. And I said, Doug, Doug, I'm
| just started to get involved with software development, and we
| have this really cool tool we're working on. Do you have any
| advice, about ... for a young software developer. He looked at
| me and said:
|
| "Yes. Make sure that whatever you do is very modular. Make
| everything as module as possible. Because you know that some of
| your ideas are going to endure, and some are not. The problem
| is you don't know which one will, and which one won't. So you
| want to be able to separate the pieces so that those pieces can
| carry on and move forward."
| DonHopkins wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121705
|
| Douglas C. Engelbart: A Profile of His Work and Vision: Past,
| Present and Future. Prepared by Logitech, October 2005.
|
| https://www.logitech.com/lang/pdf/Engelbart_Backgrounder.pdf
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17122581
|
| DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | prev | next [-]
|
| Valerie Landau recommends this web site about Douglass
| Engelbart's life and work, with chapters from her book: The
| Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart
|
| https://engelbartbookdialogues.wordpress.com/
|
| Valerie Landau and Eileen Clegg spent years in dialog with
| Douglas Engelbart and wrote a book distilling those dialogs.
| It is available as on ebook on Amazon
|
| In addition, the book chapters are on this blog.
|
| Today, we invite you to share your thoughts and memories of
| Douglas Engelbart who passed away last night.
|
| Add your stories to the Remembrances: Doug Engelbart page
|
| ----
|
| The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart
|
| https://www.amazon.com/The-Engelbart-Hypothesis-Dialogs-
| eboo...
|
| Centuries of silo thinking and win-or-die ideological and
| economic competition have finally generated a global crisis.
| Now either we collaborate on a global scale to solve the new
| global problems, or we won't survive. The technology is
| available to do so. Billions of intelligences are waiting to
| participate. How do we bring the two together? We are at a
| decision crossroads. And as this book vividly demonstrates,
| Doug Engelbart as been there all along, waiting for us with
| the answer.
|
| Emmy-Award Winning Historian James Burke --Email to the
| authors
| nosrepa wrote:
| The mother of all comment chains.
| jntun wrote:
| I've recently been reading lots of books about 50/60/70s
| computing & especially the San Francisco element of it, so I've
| been watching Engelbart's demo myself on and off for the last few
| weeks. It really is amazing being "close" to all this time of
| history, even if the only way we can interact with it is over USB
| nowadays!
|
| Tiniest footnote correction but not only were the desk & offices
| designed by Herman Miller; the chair Engelbart is sitting on
| during the demo was also specially designed by Herman Miller!
| dfc wrote:
| Can you share some of the titles about computing in the 50-70s?
| ecliptik wrote:
| I've been reading The Innovators[1], which includes early
| computing history, just finished the section on The Mother of
| all Demos yesterday coincidentally.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)
| jntun wrote:
| Of course!
|
| What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped
| the Personal Computer Industry [2005]
|
| Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer
| Age [2000]
|
| Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their
| Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a
| Date [1996]
|
| Palo Alto [2023] (This is more for capturing the full scope
| of San Francisco / Palo Alto since the founding of California
| as a state)
|
| Those are some off the top of my head right now being away
| from my library, probably also the most impactful to me in no
| specific order.
| pmcjones wrote:
| The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop
|
| Computing in the Middle Ages by Severo Ornstein - https://wor
| rydream.com/refs/Ornstein_2002_-_Computing_in_the...
| neilv wrote:
| > _Engelbart 's demo also featured an input device known as the
| keyset, but unlike his other innovations, the keyset failed to
| catch on._
|
| Chording keyboards were popular among the "wearable computing"
| researchers (who then went on to work on things like Google
| Glass). For example, the Twiddler.
|
| One advantage of them is that you only need one hand to operate
| it.
|
| And some designs mean you can simultaneously hold it with that
| same hand, without a steady surface.
| miki123211 wrote:
| chording keyboards are still extremely popular among the blind,
| after all, chording is how you type Braille. They appear on
| everything from mechanical Braillers of the 1950's[1], to
| modern, electronic Braille displays and notetakers. Input
| methods based on this concept and adapted for the touch screen
| are even built in to both iOS[2] and Android[3].
|
| [1] https://wecapable.com/perkins-brailler-braille-typing/
|
| [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/101637
|
| [3] https://blog.google/products/android/braille-keyboard/
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >[...] but unlike his other innovations, the keyset failed to
| catch on.
|
| I'm sad that he and others like Ted Nelson and Brett Victor
| would rightly say that his most important innovations have so
| far failed to catch on. But there's still time to raise
| awareness and make them real!
|
| Ted Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMjPqr1s-cg
|
| >Ted Nelson's emotional and moving eulogy for his friend
| Douglas Engelbart. Given at the Computer History Museum in
| Mountain View, CA, on December 9, 2013.
|
| An Homage to Douglas Engelbart and a Critique of the State of
| Tech:
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/1...
|
| >You don't need me to tell you that Douglas Engelbart was one
| of the greatest men of all time. We gather today, in pretense
| of unanimity and concord, to croon over Doug's ashes and grab
| for scraps of his robe.
|
| >Everyone here will of course say they are carrying on his
| work, by whatever twisted interpretation. I for one carry on
| his work by keeping the links outside the file, as he did.
|
| >Some are no doubt here to cheer and march behind the mouse, as
| in the opening of the Mickey Mouse TV Club of yore. Let them be
| happy in that celebration.
|
| >But the real ashes to be mourned are the ashes of Doug's great
| dreams and vision, that we dance around in the costume party of
| fonts that swept aside his ideas of structure and
| collaboration.
|
| >Don't get me wrong, the people who gave us all those fonts
| were idealists too, in their way -- they just didn't
| necessarily hold a very high view of human potential.
|
| >I used to have a high view of human potential. But no one ever
| had such a soaring view of human potential as Douglas Carl
| Engelbart -- and he gave us wings to soar with him, though his
| mind flew on ahead, where few could see.
|
| > Like Icarus, he tried to fly too far too fast, and the wings
| melted off. [...]
|
| Doug and Karen Engelbart marry Marlene and Ted, May 2012:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsKFbwLeS1k
|
| >Poignant ceremony with sweet pledges, at the Marin Civic
| Center. Ann and Bill Duvall are co-celebrants. Underexposed and
| streaky, but the event is the important thing. (Battery ran out
| before the final verdict. Other camera was far away.)
|
| A few words on Doug Engelbart:
|
| https://worrydream.com/Engelbart/
|
| >Doug Engelbart died today. His work has always been very
| difficult for writers to interpret and explain.
|
| >Technology writers, in particular, tend to miss the point
| miserably, because they see everything as a technology problem.
| Engelbart devoted his life to a human problem, with technology
| falling out as part of a solution. When I read tech writers'
| interviews with Engelbart, I imagine these writers interviewing
| George Orwell, asking in-depth probing questions about his
| typewriter.
|
| >Here's the most facile interpretation of Engelbart, splendidly
| exhibited by this New York Times headline:
|
| >"Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at
| 88"
|
| >This is as if you found the person who invented writing, and
| credited them for inventing the pencil. (This analogy may be
| more apt than any of us are comfortable with.)
|
| >Then there's the shopping list interpretation:
|
| >His system, called NLS, showed actual instances of, or
| precursors to, hypertext, shared screen collaboration, multiple
| windows, on-screen video teleconferencing, and the mouse as an
| input device.
|
| >These are not true statements. [...]
| Animats wrote:
| The original chording keyboard was from Baudot, around 1897.[1]
| The original plan was for the sender to send 5-bit teletype
| characters with a 5-bit keyboard. This was deployed, not just a
| prototype.
|
| [1]
| https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co33197...
| pests wrote:
| Here is a great run down of that history:
|
| https://computer.rip/2024-02-25-a-history-of-the-tty.html
|
| Early versions had to be mechanically synced at the sending and
| receiving side. The typists had strict timings so the other end
| could receive it. This led to a version of punch cards that
| could be pre-typed and then fed in automatically, reducing the
| skill needed of the operator. The linage to teletypes were
| almost obvious.
|
| Very good read, don't want to spoil too much.
| Animats wrote:
| The form of a keyboard had to be invented. Early printing
| telegraphs used a piano-like keyboard, with white and black
| keys.[1]
|
| (Keeping both ends in sync was a huge problem. The machine
| shown was synched by having the sending operator send
| AAAAAAAAA while the receiving operator made adjustments. If
| the machines got out of sync, the receiving operator opened
| the line switch, which stopped local echo at the sending end.
| Then both ends had to repeat the AAAAAAAAA drill.
|
| It took a long time, from 1846 to 1907, until Howard Krum
| finally came up with a mechanism that didn't have sync
| problems. Krum had the advantage that steel and stamping were
| available. The clock industry had figured out how to mass-
| produce mechanisms. Mechanism design then got out of the
| handmade brass era. This was, in its day, an advance
| comparable to going from tubes to ICs.)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJCfhbPAv9c
| Animats wrote:
| Mandatory XKCD.[1]
|
| [1] https://xkcd.com/1234/
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Chorded keyboards always seemed like an ergonomic nightmare -
| every keystroke is now multiple fingers having to move. You're
| multiplying the repetitive action...
| adminm wrote:
| I'm sure there's a (mythical at the moment) device just waiting
| to "disrupt they keyboard industry"
|
| It's crazy that most of us are effectively using a fancy
| typewriter. Qwerty layout dates 1874, clocking in at just over
| 150 years of age.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| We already did.
|
| It's called the mouse.
| adminm wrote:
| You type faster with your mouse than keyboard?
| GregDavidson wrote:
| I regularly use my Twiddler with my Android phone. It allows me
| to fully operate all the applications I use on my desktop
| computer, e.g. Emacs. https://www.mytwiddler.com/
| nanna wrote:
| Even Emacs? Do say more...
| mcshicks wrote:
| I have a twiddler and tried doing this a long time ago i.e.
| emacs with a twiddler. For me I really needed to use a sticky
| cntl and alt key because I just couldn't press the cntl
| button on the top and chord at the same time. And I couldn't
| figure out how to make the sticky cntl work on the phone. But
| that was a very long time ago. Now I just use a mini bt
| keyboard and termux to run emacsclient over ssh and that's
| good enough for what I want.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| It's cool. But it's missing the 411/305Hz sawtooth. Last year I
| tried to setup my vim to play these beeps in normal/edit modes
| and on some key presses. It was quite fun but I wasn't able to
| play a long lasting sound like in the demo.
| peteforde wrote:
| I urge you to consider using an RC network with a hex inverter to
| debounce your switch input without resorting to a 100ms delay.
| I've wasted enough hours to know that the best kind of software
| debounce is a few resistors and capacitors.
|
| https://mayaposch.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/d...
| kragen wrote:
| I feel like the diode in this schematic is the wrong way around
| for a normally open switch: it speeds up the keyrelease event
| when the switch opens instead of the keypress event when it
| closes.
|
| But I think the 100ms delay Ken mentions was intended for a
| different purpose: to wait for all the fingers in the character
| to be detected. I think a much better approach would be to wait
| for one of the keys to be released before registering a
| character. Isn't that what Engelbart did? I suspect this
| timing-based approach explains why Ken found it so difficult to
| use.
|
| As I understand it, Baudot's original chording keyboard instead
| mechanically locked the keys down until the character was
| transmitted over the telegraph line. The telegrapher had time
| to enter his next character while the system was transmitting
| the characters of his colleagues, interleaved with his own at a
| fixed baud rate.
| peteforde wrote:
| Oh, that (waiting for all fingers to be detected) does indeed
| change how I would approach the scenario, and blew past me in
| my initial reading.
|
| That all said, even with 100ms cycles I would hardware
| debounce the inputs, capture the keystrokes with an ISR to
| set some semaphore variables, and then create a 100ms loop
| that checks the current value (and resets) those semaphore
| variables.
|
| Eliminating switch bounce allows far more elegant software
| handling of the values you're reading, so Ken could turn his
| attention and development energy towards things like sliding
| time windows (100ms starting from the first keydown, for
| example) instead of trying to boil the ocean cancelling
| bounces.
| kragen wrote:
| Yeah, the 100ms wait after stability probably avoids any
| need to debounce. You need to debounce if you want to
| detect both keypress and keyrelease events reliably,
| though.
|
| For mass-production products it's cheaper to add 100 lines
| of code to your firmware than to add a resistor to your
| PCB, much less a diode, capacitor, and two resistors, but
| for prototypes and low-volume designs it's less clear.
|
| WRT ISRs, plausibly in this case the microcontroller can
| just poll instead of using interrupts. You probably don't
| mean "semaphore"; semaphores are a blocking construct, and
| if there's one thing you can't do in an ISR, it's block.
| peteforde wrote:
| You're right, I should have chosen better words.
|
| I merely meant setting a flag bit from 0 to 1, later to
| be picked up by your loop. Since actual semaphore was
| communicated with flags...
|
| I have yet to see the perfect software debounce
| algorithm. I've come to believe that it is a Sisyphean
| task. Meanwhile, Schottky diodes are extremely well-
| suited to the task.
|
| You might consider 100 lines worth of complexity to make
| a switch work to be free, but I won't lose any sleep
| believing otherwise.
| spit2wind wrote:
| Obligatory mention of the Plover stenography engine:
| https://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/
|
| So far most boards seem to be made in the US. Anyone making them
| in Europe or elsewhere?
| piyushgupta53 wrote:
| this is such a great read!
| vietjtnguyen wrote:
| Custom mechanical keyboard firmware like QMK [1] and ZMK [2]
| support custom chords called "combos". Basically if the combo's
| set of keys is hit (within some timeout which defaults to 50 ms)
| then a specific keycode is sent. You then get a fun game of
| identifying low probability combos and mapping then to useful
| keycodes. You also start realizing there's some prime real estate
| to take advantage of. Two-key combos require some thought cause
| bigrams can be surprisingly common. Three-key combos are
| basically open though.
|
| In migrating from the ZSA Voyager to a 36-key keyboard (Chocofi)
| I've relied on combos as I don't like overloading keys with tap-
| versus-hold behavior as I can never get the timing down. For
| example my left index, middle, and ring finger mashed down on the
| home row (resting position) is escape in my current layout
| (Colemak mod DK which means keys R, S, and T). It's three fingers
| but hardly any extra effort. I've managed to do away with a
| symbol layer and have been quite happy with the result. If anyone
| is curious here is my "36-key training layout" for the ZSA
| Voyager [3] and my current Chocofi layout [4].
|
| 1: https://docs.qmk.fm/features/combo
|
| 2: https://zmk.dev/docs/keymaps/combos
|
| 3: https://configure.zsa.io/voyager/layouts/d7L0v/latest/0
|
| 4: https://github.com/vietjtnguyen/zmk-
| chocofi/blob/main/config...
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