The picture above looks pretty cool, doesn’t it? Well, it is just a picture. the Russian group, led by a man called Art Lebedev, calimed they had the first functional keybord with visual, changable keys. Note that this was presented years after the CEO of Intelligentia International, Valdi Ivancic, who’s also the inventor of the technology, was talking to some potential Russian inventors in Stockholm. Mr Ivancic declined the investor after some due diligence. What the Art Lebedev group didn’t know is that there were already patent applications filed by Intelligentia and Valdi Ivancic.
The Russians tried to convince the world they had a real product but asked people to pay $10,000 for a keyboard that could not be delivered. Years later they presented a num pad with only 9 keys but the cost was around $1,000 and at that time Intelligentia, who had now become Swedish Keys, had already released the first version with the F-keys, as well as United Keys with second version and a num pad on the keyboards manufactured by Foxxconn the year ealier.
So, you be the judge if it was better to have the original back then or just a photshoped version of a keyoard with a price tag of $10,000? Today there are many companies with better designs and newer technologies that didn’t exist back then, so you will for sure find a perfect sample for your needs and applications.