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james, the giant peach@JimmyRis• over 6 years ago

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

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james, the giant peach@JimmyRis• over 6 years ago
Replying to @JimmyRis

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

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james, the giant peach@JimmyRis• over 6 years ago
Replying to @JimmyRis

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.

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james, the giant peach@JimmyRis• over 6 years ago
Replying to @JimmyRis

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

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james, the giant peach@JimmyRis• over 6 years ago
Replying to @JimmyRis

Pressing mouse buttons while keying switched the keyset to enter numbers and symbols instead of letters, or acted as SHIFT to allowe entering of capital letters.

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james, the giant peach@JimmyRis• over 6 years ago
Replying to @JimmyRis

There are maybe a handful of functional Engelbart Keysets in existence: one resides at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, one at the Bruce Damer’s Digibarn, and one with @TheTedNelson

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james, the giant peach@JimmyRis• over 6 years ago
Replying to @JimmyRis

Fun fact: @TheTedNelson’s keyset has been adapted to work with a USB interface on modern computers. I’ve played with it and it’s a beautiful device!

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