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Douglas Engelbart was a visionary computer scientist and technologist commonly known for the computer mouse, though his most significant contributions were more philosophical (the introduction of the concept of collective intelligence) https://t.co/Lk1zC6Wu4g


Less known was his invention of companion to the mouse: a one handed keyset that allowed the user to key in every symbol from the keyboard with one hand while the other hand operated the mouse. https://t.co/j1ZSaJu7Tv


The Engelbart Keyset has five keys, each combination of these five keys corresponding to a letter or symbol. Not intended to be faster than the keyboard at text input, it allowed the user to mouse around and key in special text shortcuts without moving hands.

The key combinations mapped to binary numbers representing each letter: 00001 for a, 00010 for b, 00011 for c, and so on through the alphabet. https://t.co/PzHvMsEH8j
