The development history of the two handed ergonomic keyboard

PCD Maltron Ltd. was established in 1977 to make fully ergonomic keyboards. The company was founded by Stephen Hobday as a result of a meeting between himself and Lillian Malt when Stephen Hobday became intrigued by the issues surrounding the use of the Scholes Qwerty keyboard layout.

At the time Stephen was running Printed Circuit Design Ltd. (known as PCD ),  a small business in Farnborough Hampshire making electronic equipment. Stephen was interested in sourcing some new products to manufacture, and it just so happened that a local company had asked him if he would be interested in making them a computer keyboard.

This led to discussions with Farnborough Technical College about the design of the keyboard, and in turn to the meeting with keyboard training specialist Lillian Malt who had been closely concerned in the printing industry with the retraining of Linotype operators to use computer keyboards.

Lillian informed Stephen of the difficulties some people were having when completing intensive computer work. She was concerned about this and alerted Stephen to the effects of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), a condition that was little known at the time. Putting their collective skills and experience together, Stephen and Lillian produced a revolutionary new keyboard that was designed to be totally ergonomic and enable use without any basic strain.

The first keyboard was shown at the News Tec exhibition, Brighton, in December 1976 and created a big stir and a lot of interest from potential clients. The Company, PCD Maltron Ltd. was formed to cater for the demand and offer the benefits of their unique product to a greater number of people.

Since its inception PCD Maltron has continued to develop their fully ergonomic range of keyboards and offer thoroughly modern designs that can be used with any PC/Mac.

See the Academic Papers page for further information.

The first Maltron keyboard models were bespoke for pre-press and the then new "Word Processing" machines.

Maltron Original Series Keyboard - Mk II

Further models were produced for the BBC Micro and then the new IBM PC computer.

Maltron A Type Keyboard

F1 to F12 Function key row was added for the new IBM PC computer.

Maltron C Type Keyboard

To make them more accessible the Function Keys were moved to an extended row above the numbers.

Although the C Type MALTRON keyboard is no longer a current production model it is still fully supported and repair, refurbishment and upgrades are available.

See the price list for refurbishment/repair details.

Further refined to the current model range.

Maltron E Type Ergonomic Keyboard

To improve hand comfort when resting, the four keys along the back of the C type were moved to the central group and the front extended to give larger palm resting pads.

Maltron F Type TrackBall Ergonomic Keyboard

Optional centre trackball fitted with two button function suitable for either left or right handed users.

New J89 Maltron E Type Ergonomic Keyboard

The new version of the J88 keyboard with industry standard key symbol groupings. This avoids operating systems issues that some users had experienced with the traditional Maltron pairings.

New L90 Maltron USB Ergonomic Keyboard

Newly introduced the L90 keyboard is a refinement to the existing E Type body and key placement with native USB controller. Note that each of the thumb groups now have a pair of tall keys. This is particularly beneficial for Maltron Letter Layout users as it is the left space key which becomes E rather than the Enter key with a J88 layout.

This new USB keyboard has a highly optimised letter layout designed to make the transition between and conventional flat Qwerty keyboard and the Maltron Fully Ergonomic keyboard as easy as possible.

In addition to the Maltron and Qwerty letter layouts the new L90 keyboard is also available with language specific Dvorak layouts.

A native USB trackball version of the L90 keyboard is now also available.

To be continued...