The height, shape and habit of every human being are different. In large workplaces, the construction of computer furniture and accessories cannot be made according these peculiarities of every human being. As a result every computer user has to work on standard computer furniture and standard computer accessories that may not match with his physical construction and peculiarities of that user.

The major physical problems caused by prolonged computer usage can be categorized as neck pain and stiffness, low back pain and stiffness, and strain of the wrists. These problems are caused by chairs, computer desks, and keyboard support stands that are unsuitable for the particular computer user.

This article illustrates 10 inventions on ergonomically developed computer accessories including keyboard stands, monitor accessories, stands and tables which attempt to substantially reduce these problems caused by uncomfortable positioning of computer devices.

A keyboard is the most important input device for a computer. It is used with various types and sizes of computer. But the same standard keyboard will not work efficiently with different types of computers at different environments. There is a need to develop special keyboards to meet special requirements.

This article illustrates 10 inventions on special types of keyboards. The special keyboard are used in special computers or computers used for special purposes. A special keyboard is to be understood as a keyboard having features beyond a normal keyboard.

The example of special keyboards are, a children’s keyboard which may be colorful and attractive, a keyboard in public place need to be more robust, the keyboard in a palmtop may have less number of keys, the keyboard for a game station may have special attachments, a multimedia keyboard may have CD ROM and speakers, a wireless keyboard may have remote control features, a touch sensitive keyboard may have sensors on the keys and so on.

A conventional computer keyboard consists of as many as 101 keys. The keyboard has several sections, such as text entry section, navigation section, and numeric keypad etc. and each having several keys on the keyboard.

The size of the keyboard is a major inconvenience for portable computers, as they cannot be carried easily. Thus there are certain circumstances which compels to reduce the size of a keyboard.

Reducing the size of a keyboard leads to several problems. A reduced size keyboard may not contain all the keys available on a full size keyboard; a reduced size keyboard may not be convenient to operate, a reduced size keyboard may have a different key layout which is difficult to learn etc.

This article illustrates 10 inventions on reducing the size of the keyboard. Various inventions have attempted to solve the contradictions so that the user achieves the benefits of both ‘reduced size’ and ‘typing comfort’.

A computer keyboard consists of several sections and each section consists of several numbers of keys. The text entry section contains the standard character keys, navigation section contains cursor movement and page control keys, numeric keypad contains numeric keys and function keys section contain function keys and special keys. Although the increased number of keys helps smooth interaction with a computer there are situations where it is necessary to reduce the number of keys.

The need for reducing number of keys in a keyboard creates a technical contradiction. Generally more number of keys can support more number of functions and less number of keys can support less number of functions. We need more number of functions (all the functions available in a full size keyboard), but we want only less number of keys (Contradiction). This contradiction has been solved by using multi-stroke mechanism.

There may be different purposes to reduce the number of keys in a keyboard. Some of them intend to reduce the size of the keyboard while some others intend to increase the speed of typing. But all of these inventions use multi-stroke mechanism to generate more number of signals from less number of keys.

The standard QWERTY keyboard was developed in the late 1800’s for the typewriters. As people were acquainted with that the same layout was retained for the computer keyboards. Many people feel that the QWERTY layout is not very efficient layout and there have been many inventions on different layouts of character keys.

In order to improve the key arrangement, two major issues should be addressed. (i) The improved key arrangement should offer significantly improved productivity. (ii) The training time for learning the improved key arrangement should be minimized.

This article analyzes 10 inventions from US patent database each of which have proposed a new layout giving us some specific advantage. The inventions try to achieve one or more of the following advantages, viz., to reduce finger movements during typing, to achieve speed in data entry, to reduce errors in typing, making keyboard easy to learn, making easy for children to find keys, reduce stress in hands and finger and suitability for special purpose computers.