03 / 07
The Mother of All Demos
Five keys · thirty-one chords
The Keyset
The mouse only ever handled position. Commands came from the left hand, on a five-key handset played like chords.
The five-key chord keyset. Photograph: Michael Hicks, CC BY 2.0.
01
How it was played
Both hands, neither moving
Press keys together and the combination is a character or a command. Five keys give thirty-one, and neither hand ever had to leave its position — the right on the mouse, the left on the keyset, the full keyboard between them.
Mouse and keyset shown together, as they were used. Photograph: Michael Hicks, CC BY 2.0.
One key
5 chords
Two keys
10 chords
Three keys
10 chords
Four keys
5 chords
All five
1 chord
Every chord the five keys can make, grouped by how many keys are pressed together: 5 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 = 31. Filled keys are pressed.
02
What happened to it
The half that did not survive
It took weeks to learn and made the system look difficult, so the industry took the mouse and left the keyset behind.
Engelbart argued against that for the rest of his life. He designed for daily use by a trained user, not for a first try by a stranger, and he thought the trade the industry made was the wrong one.
Still open work
Training, chords and collective method were the parts nobody productised.
The future
was shared.