Hi Craig,
Thanks for the interesting statistics about Morse vs. text messaging.
Morse has three other ergonomic advantages you didn't mention:
1. You can send Morse with one hand (even medium-fast text messaging
requires two hands)
2. You can send Morse without looking at the actuation device (text
messaging would be very difficult to do without looking)
3. You can *receive* Morse without looking at the device, too (text
messaging with synthesized speech output would suffer from heavy use of
abbreviations, proper nouns, etc.)
These three factors would make Morse easier to use (for someone who
knows it and can do head-copy) when driving, at night, or in other
situations where only one hand is available. (Sending discrete messages
across a conference table or checking stock listings while in church
come to mind. And of course, 12-year-olds would just love it for
cheating on tests.)
An effective keychain PDA/communicator would be shaped such that when
it was held, the user's thumb and index finger would be ideally
positioned near the dot and dash switches, with the palm and the other
three fingers providing stability. You might add another switch near
the middle finger to serve as a mode control, "enter" function,
backspace, or virtual cursor control during list playback.
Another interesting twist would be to take advantage of the sense of
touch (haptics), not just the ability to actuate the switches. For
example, miniature solenoids in the switches could "push back" on your
fingers, creating force-feedback to emulate different levels of switch
resistance or even sending Morse back to you through your fingertips as
an alternative to an acoustic interface.
I'm not sure how fast one can copy CW this way ;)
73,
Wayne
N6KR
On May 16, 2005, at 6:25 PM, Craig Rairdin wrote:
For fun I ran the text of the
Bible through a program that counted keystrokes using each of these
methods....
There are some other interesting advantages to a CW interface....
http://www.elecraft.com
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