‘I made the world’s worst keyboard’: This YouTuber’s homemade board has over 1,000 keys and types in words, not letters

If you’ve been looking for a new keyboard layout to try, one YouTuber has invented a keyboard that can only type the 1,000 most common words and, needless to say, this won’t be replacing your old QWERTY board.

YouTuber Attoparsec (via Hackaday) has put out a new video showing off the “ten hundred computer letter getter” (1,000-word keyboard). After six months of work and 1,020 keys, the ten hundred computer letter getter has the 1,000 most common words for communication, with a few extra keys on the side for creating longer versions of words like “ing”, “ed”, and “est”, and for utility keys like “Escape” and “Enter”.

This idea comes from an xkcd webcomic titled “Up Goer Five” where writer Randall Munroe explained how a rocket works with only the 1,000 most common words. This then branched out into Thing Explainer, a book where Munroe explains microwaves, helicopters, and more with those same parameters.

The keyboard itself is made up of five panels, all of which are intended to fit on Attoparsec’s desk. The 1,000 words are then ordered alphabetically and split across the five boards, for space on the bottom of the rightmost panel for utility keys like “Enter”, “Escape”, “er”, “ing” etc.

To avoid having uniquely spaced PCB for each individual word, Attoparsec opted to make each key around one inch wide and hyphenate some of the longer words. In a previous video, Attoparsec 3D Printed and customized keycaps for another keyboard but that took a month of work for 86 keys.

Attoparsec says that the same technique felt unfeasible for the 1,020 keys needed for the letter getter, and he had done it before. Instead, Attoparsec opted to use dye-sublimation on blank keycaps to print all 1,020 keys, which is a method of printing used in many cheaper consumer keyboards.

After all this work, Attoparsec says, “There’s so many keys, and yet somehow not nearly enough”. He describes the 1,000 words as rather limiting, not only because 1000 words aren’t enough for all you might want to say. The 1,000 words have a particular focus on body parts and incomplete categories like “1-7” and “10” but no “8” or “9”.

On his normal keyboard, Attoparsec achieved 83 words per minute at an accuracy of 97% on a typing speed test. Doing a typing speed test with only words from the ten hundred computer letter getter, he managed to achieve just 13 words per minute.

Finishing out the script for his video using only the letter getter, Attoparsec says:

“This is a full body thing to do. It does kind of feel like you’re using some early computer, though, or an imaginary mad thinker thing from a bad movie, so that’s pretty cool.” Well said, Attoparsec, well said.