Google Japan’s conceptual keyboard is inspired by Dial Telephones

Following a farce of the April 2021 fish whose revelation was delayed due to the pandemic, Google Japan concocted strange and wonderful keyboard concepts year after year. Its latest creation seems straight out of an alternative dimension where tactile technology has never replaced Dial telephones, and this feature has finally found its place in other devices.

Instead of keys, the GBOARD dial version version has various alphanumeric characters and functions arranged under a series of nine dials of different sizes, one only for the return key. To type a specific character, you insert your finger into its corresponding hole and then rotate the wheel until you reach its limit. When you release it, the dial turns back.

Dial telephones used a technique called numbering by impulses, in which a spring dial generated a series of electrical pulses when it came back to its original position. The telephone company decoded these impulses to determine which number was composed. Google Japan’s GBOARD Dial Dial version exchanges the numbering by impulses for modern sensors that reflect the rotation movements of each dial in USB signals.

And as the phones of yesteryear which ended a call when you hook them physically, the designers of the keyboard at dial created a support that turns off your webcam during a video call when you place your mouse on it.