Bill Buxton's Notes

Maltron is an interesting British company, founded in 1977, that brought a radical and distinctive approach to a fairly established and standardized product: keyboards. The design was driven by two related factors: a desire to combat RSI, coupled with some observations of the human hand. The idea was that if the form of the keyboard better fit the shape of the hand, as they saw it, there would be less stress and therefore less RSI.

The aspect of the hand that they worked from is the curvature traced around the periphery of the fingers that can be observed when you look at the back of your hand with your fingers together. The thought was that if they built the surface of the keyboard in the form of two concave bowls – one for each hand – the result would fit the hand much better than the traditional more-or-less flat traditional keyboard surface.

The "they" in the above was businessman, Stephen Hobday, who founded the company and is now chairman, and a keyboard training specialist from the local Technical College, Lillian Malt, after whom the keyboard and company were named.

I had known about the company from pretty early in its history, but had never used one. At the same time, with my interest in chord keyboards – especially the Microwriter – and with Edgar Mathias and the development of his keyboard (also in the collection – I had developed an interest in one-handed keyboard design. Hence, when I had the opportunity, I acquired this one-handed Maltron keyboard for the collection.

When it arrived, it showed every sign of having had heavy use over the years. I started to clean it up, but then stopped. It struck me that if I made it look pristine, it would lose some of its impact – the ability to tell its own story: that not only could it be used, but it was used … heavily.

As Stephen Hobday wrote to me:

… the single handed units were first made and offered as part of our range in 1989. Since then there have been some changes to the design but essentially the concept is the same. …. At Stevenson College Edinburgh, one of the early users was a student who had only one hand. She had endured many years of frustration but found that she quickly learned to key on her single handed keyboard, and subsequently got a Job ahead of some 50 other applicants. Many thousands of these keyboards have now been supplied to users in all parts of the world.

Finally, I find PCD Maltron an interesting example of a particular kind of company – once that finds a balance between the tradition of specialized craftsmanship and the modern industrialized world. There are a lot of companies represented in my collection, yet few of them have lasted, especially focusing on one basic thing. Scale up and expand or disappear seems to be the dominant tendency. It is good to have counter examples to remind us that there is more than one way to proceed.

References

Bill Buxton
April 2011