Back in 1993, Dr. Lance Rucker released the ErgoLogic Keyboard for those suffering Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSI), like Desquervain’s Tenosynovitis and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Rucker’s expertise for the task was, at first glance, non-existent. He’s a championship ballroom dancer, actor, novelist, playwright, sailor, violinist, martial arts student, former skydiver, professional horse trainer and pistol and rifle marksman who speaks three languages in addition to English.

World’s Greatest Extinct Keyboard
[FlexPro Ergonomic Keyboard]

Oh. Rucker’s also the University of British Columbia’s Chairman of Operative Dentistry and Director of Clinical Simulation and the Surgical Telescope Evaluation Program. Second thought… With a resume like that, what makes you think he couldn’t tackle repetitive stress on the keyboard?

Anyway, his press release for ErgoLogic claimed, “Approximately seventeen percent of users who use a keyboard more than two hours a day suffer from pain, numbness, and loss of finger control, and repetitive motion disorders account for more than 50 percent of all workplace injuries.”

The standout feature of his solution? You could crank the halves of the split keyboard to a 45 degree angle, like a drawbridge.

This allowed you to type with your hands at about the same positions they would occupy in space if you simply bent your elbows. In addition, the board’s cranking mechanism allowed you to adjust the two keypads to your most natural position.

That near-vertical position offers two massive advantages:

  1. It moves you off the unnatural hand-elbow-shoulder positions forced by fixed keyboards, and;
  2. It makes it nearly impossible for keyboard pounders to hammer keys.

That, in turn, helps you avoid the long term blow-back against joints and tendons that comes after years of keyboard abuse.

The ErgoLogic listed at a pricey US$399, although you could later buy it as a Key Tronic FlexPro for half-price: $199. (Point of reference: The Microsoft Natural keyboard sold at a much more beancounter-friendly $69.)

We had a few workers who suffered from various strains of tendonitis, so we deployed some FlexPros. Some adapted to vertical typing within minutes. Others adjusted the boards so they offered no more angle than, say, a Microsoft Natural keyboard.

Those who went vertical were uniformly impressed. The near-horizontals, however, pounded their fragile FlexPros to dust and got no relief.

In the end, the ErgoLogic/FlexPros were killed by price, fragility and user misunderstanding. Too bad. We bought our last batch circa 2003, and at least one tendonitis-prone manager still swears by them. He explains, “When I use a flat keyboard, my palms go numb and my wrists, elbows and shoulders ache all night. A day on the FlexPro feels more like a long massage. There’s nothing like it.”

As our old 9-pin FlexPros are getting pretty hard to keep running… and Key Tronic no longer offers anything remotely like them… we’re open to suggestions that are closer to FlexPros in concept, as opposed to those highlighted at Adaptive Technology for Information and Computing at MIT.

…And for our readers who are wondering what the heck this has to do with email… What do you type an email message on? Huh?