[Elecraft] For the CW OPS

[Don Wilhelm]

The "8 finger keyboard" sounds like some sort of keyboard to key direct 
ASCII 8 bit character codes.
It is reminiscent of a keyboard with fewer buttons (I believe it was 6) 
that was in trial use at IBM for those people with a handicap (stroke, 
etc.) that left them unable to handle a standard keyboard with ease.  
Yes, they had to learn the 5 finger "chords", but after doing so, data 
entry was not difficult.  That was back in the mid to late "80s" - I do 
not know the outcome of that device.  I did know one gentleman (a 
neighbor with whom I carpooled) who used that device successfully.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 4/3/2012 11:05 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> Years ago, when the Internet was still young, a fellow rode across the USA
> on his bicycle equipped with a solar panel charged the battery of an early
> "laptop" computer. He blogged (the term hadn't been invented yet, IIRC) and
> e-mailed while riding. He did that using an 8-key keyboard operated with the
> fingers of each hand squeezing switches mounted on the grips of his
> handlebars so he never needed to take his attention off of steering with
> both hands. Combinations of squeezes represented every letter on the
> keyboard (no Morse involved, sigh).
>