¶Interview: Professor Eiiti Wada, Creator of the HHKB

https://www.massdrop.com/article/eiiti-wada-interview?mode=guest_open

A great interview with the creator of the Happy Hacking Keyboard. Questions are decided by a poll in the mechanical keyboard community.

Professor Eiiti Wada:

When America’s cowboys were in the middle of a trip and their horse died, they would leave the horse there. But even if they were in the middle of a desert, they would take their saddle with them. The horse was a consumable good, but the saddle was an interface that their bodies had gotten used to. In the same vein, PCs are consumable goods, while keyboards are important interfaces.

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Newcomers might see the slanted key arrangement as strange, and love the squared (ortholinear) layout. But the current pattern is said to avoid the type-bar conflict. The present key arrangement has a functional beauty. Many typists and computer scientists are fully accustomed to it. Once accustomed, human beings can have a hard time learning the slightly different interface. Keyboards should maintain the present layout.