Before keyboards became the main way people interacted with computers, the QWERTY layout began as a solution to a mechanical problem. Early typewriters could jam when nearby letter bars were pressed too quickly, so Christopher Latham Sholes separated commonly paired letters. Remington, better known for manufacturing firearms and sewing machines, mass-produced the design and helped turn QWERTY into the standard. The same layout later moved from typewriters to teleprinters, com

Before touchscreens became the most widely used input method, controlling a computer required a separate device such as a keyboard, mouse, or joystick. The touchscreen changed that by combining the display and the controls into one surface. The first finger-driven capacitive touchscreen was developed by E.A. Johnson in 1965 for air traffic control. Early consumer attempts struggled, but the iPhone’s multi-touch interface showed that tapping, swiping, and pinching could replac

Before keyboards, mice, touchscreens, and game controllers, humans already had a remarkably capable interface: your hand. Millions of years of evolution shaped the hand for gripping, feeling, moving, gesturing, and creating. Its combination of muscles, bones, nerves, and fine motor control made it the natural foundation for nearly every tool and input device that followed. Over time, interfaces were designed around the hand. Keyboards matched our fingers, mice fit beneath the

Before touchscreens, gestures, and wearable input, most digital control followed two basic ideas: point directly at something, or move through a fixed set of options. The mouse established the pointing paradigm, where continuous movement controls a cursor across a screen. The D-pad introduced a different approach, using discrete directions such as up, down, left, and right to navigate menus and make selections. For years, these two paradigms developed separately. The Nintendo

Before game pads became the familiar controllers of consoles and virtual worlds, they began with a simple experiment: how could someone control an object moving across a screen? In 1958, Tennis for Two used two aluminum controllers, each with a knob and a button. Players turned the knob to aim and pressed the button to serve, creating one of the earliest examples of physical controls connected to a video game. Over time, game pads evolved from simple buttons and directional c

Before joysticks became familiar tools for gaming and simulation, they began with a practical aviation problem: could one control make an aircraft easier and more intuitive to steer? In 1908, aviator Louis Blériot introduced a pivoting stick that controlled pitch and roll through natural hand movement. It replaced a complicated collection of levers and pulleys with one direct connection between the pilot’s movement and the machine’s response. Over time, the joystick moved fro

Before motion control became part of smartphones, game controllers, and wearables, the inertial measurement unit began with a much more serious challenge: could a machine understand its own movement without relying on external signals? Early IMUs combined accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure motion, rotation, and orientation. Developed for military navigation and later used in the Apollo program, they showed that machines could track movement independently and respond to

Before voice assistants became part of everyday life, voice control began with a much simpler question: could a machine recognize what a person was saying? Early systems like Bell Labs’ AUDREY and IBM Shoebox showed that spoken words could become digital input. They were limited, slow, and far from natural conversation, but they proved that machines could begin to understand human speech. Over time, voice control moved from lab prototypes to dictation software, smartphones, s

Before Neuralink made brain-computer interfaces part of the mainstream conversation, Cyberlink showed an earlier version of the same ambition. Introduced in 1996 by Brain Actuated Technologies, Cyberlink used a forehead-mounted headband to capture signals from the brain, eyes, and facial muscles. It was an early attempt to turn human intent into computer control. The system found early use in accessibility and later influenced consumer experiments such as the OCZ Neural Impul

Before computers could respond to gesture, they first had to learn how to see movement. Welcome to another chapter of Input Origins, where we rewind to the moments that changed how we interact with technology. Computer vision opened a new path for human-computer interaction. Instead of holding a controller, pressing a key, or wearing a glove, the body itself could become the interface. Myron Krueger’s VIDEOPLACE showed an early version of that idea in the 1970s. Decades later

Before gesture control became a feature in games, headsets, and smart devices, it was something researchers tried to build by strapping sensors to the hand. The Sayre Glove, developed in 1977, was one of the first devices to translate finger movement into digital signals. It showed that the hand itself could become an input device. Years later, the Nintendo Power Glove brought that idea into living rooms. It was ambitious, imperfect, and ahead of its time, but it introduced a

Before the mouse, computers were mostly controlled through commands, punch cards, and keyboards. Interaction was indirect, technical, and far from the way people naturally point, choose, and move through information. The computer mouse changed that. Introduced by Douglas Engelbart during the 1968 “Mother of All Demos,” it turned hand movement into cursor movement and made computers feel more visual, direct, and collaborative. A small wooden block on wheels helped open the pat

Before touchscreens became normal, the stylus showed a different way to control computers. Instead of typing commands or pressing buttons, users could draw directly on a surface and turn hand movement into digital input. The RAND Tablet, introduced in 1964, helped define the idea of graphical input. It connected human movement, precision, and computation in a new way. From there, the story moves toward modern tablets, digital drawing, gestures, and neural signals. It is a sho

Every input device starts with the same question: how do humans tell machines what they want? For decades, the answer changed again and again. Dials, buttons, remotes, touchscreens, and neural interfaces each brought control closer to the user. This is where -Input Origins- begins. The first edition looks at the shift from physical control to remote control, starting with the Zenith Space Command, the first wireless TV remote. Input Origins is a monthly series about the devic

Wearable Devices Ltd - Latest newsletter updates and announcements

Mudra Link is designed to seamlessly integrate with various digital platforms, providing users with a highly responsive and natural...

Combining gesture control cameras with neural wearable interfaces surpasses line-of-sight and field-of-view limits

Meet us at OpenXR at Seattle, September 2024

The latest upgrade to the Mudra Band - new gesture control functionality for the Apple Watch. This new feature enhances convenience by...

Users can now control their Apple devices using the same gestures as those used on the Apple Vision Pro (“AVP”), enabling seamless...