From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!gnu
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: (Thanks Harpo) Here is Chord Keyboard info
Article-I.D.: sun.171
Posted: Wed Dec 29 16:08:54 1982
Received: Thu Dec 30 04:41:39 1982

To: decvax!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxx!marks, decvax!harpo!vortex!lauren

Thanks to Harpo's refusal to forward mail, everybody gets to read this.

Published literature:

IEEE Computer, December 1978.

People involved:  all were at IBM Cambridge Scientific Center, 545 Tech
Square, Cambridge MA 02139 as of about 1980.  
	Nathaniel Rochester -- inventor of CK and IBM Fellow.
	Frank Bequaert -- worked on it a lot.

IBM Technical Reports available:

TR 00.2934-1, "Chord Keyboard Architecture", N. Rochester, F.C. Bequaert, 
E.M. Sharp; December 15, 1978.  (Supersedes TR 00.2934 of March 10, 1978.)
This is the primary reference work on the keyboard; it gives an excellent
view, both overall and detailed, of the architecture of the keyboard, including
physical dimensions and tooling info, logical operations, and operational
performance.

TR 00.2918, "Teaching Typing on a Chord Keyboard", F. C. Bequaert, N. 
Rochester; December 26, 1977.  This describes teaching experiments with
the keyboard and how well the students fared at both learning to type
with few errors and at improving their speeds.

There are also a few interesting "ST" reports, which are apparently
kept only at the Cambridge center and might have restrictions on who
can get them.  (I have them, tho, and can make copies if IBM is nasty.)

ST-166, "ASCII, EBCDIC, and APL on Chord Keyboard", N. Rochester; May
16, 1978 (revised Nov 28, 1979).  This describes the Version 7 Chord
Keyboard, which is an improved version of the one described in the
Architecture document (version 4).  It adds APL support, fixes up the
keyboard for better ASCII use, improves 3277 PF chords, and adds
typamatic.

ST-125, "Learning to Touch Type on the Chord Keyboard", F. C. Bequaert;
Nov 1, 1978.  This is a manual for the VM/370 TEACH program which
teaches you how to type on the keyboard.  The program is not too
complex and could be reproduced; the hardest part would be reproducing
the file of sample lines and sentences, which is carefully made to 
exercise various fingers and chords in sequence.  The manual includes
many examples; maybe we could get a dump of the file from IBM.

ST-130, "Visual Typing with a 3277 Display", no author identified, 
December 9, 1977 (revised November 2, 1978).  This teaches you how
to hunt-and-peck on the chord keyboard attached to a 3277.  It's
a pretty good introduction to the use of the keyboard and describes
chord definition and all the other fancy features, from a user's
point of view.

If you contemplate using or evaluating a Chord Keyboard, please keep
in touch.  I've tried to coordinate various people throughout the 
computer networking world (Usenet and Arpanet) who have an interest
in seeing it become (or be used in) a commercial product.

	John Gilmore, Sun Microsystems