Google Japan Unveils the Single-Sided "Gboard Double-Sided" Keyboard — Built as a Möbius Strip
This 208-key Möbius strip keyboard is a joke — but it's also a fully-functional keyboard, and you can build your own.
Google Japan has released its latest Gboard DIY keyboard design, and this one's a doozy — describing, as it does, a Möbius strip that places its 208 keys along the entirety of what is, topologically, a single-sided shape.
"'I want to use the back of the keyboard as well as the front!'," Google Japan writes, in translation, of the problem its latest physical Gboard design aims to solve. "In response to the voice of such users, I made a keyboard that has no front or back. A unique keyboard with two sides. Gboard double-sided version."
Google Japan's claim to have made a double-sided keyboard is, arguably, not quite right: while the design does indeed include keys across both the inside and outside of its ring, the shape the board forms is that of a Möbius strip, a mathematical shape defined by Johann Benedict Listing and August Ferdinand Möbius in 1858 and which has one one side and one boundary curve. Run your finger along a row of keys on the new Gboard, and you'll end up right back where you started without ever having lifted it.
"The endless structure has no front or back," Google Japan claims of its design. "You can type at any angle. If you put the Gboard double-sided version [somewhere], suddenly a circle of people will form there. If we used it together, smooth 'teamringWorkin.' You'll come up with some original ideas.
The one-sided-but-not-in-the-usual-way keyboard is only the latest in a string of designs from Google Japan, originally created as April Fool's jokes and which have included a keyboard that's also a teacup, a one-row-tall keyboard, and a single-keycap keyboard that's literally a key-shaped cap. While created as jokes, all are functional — and the designs for most, though not all, are released under open-source licenses.
The Gboard double-sided version, like its predecessors, is a real and functional keyboard. For those not willing to put in the effort to build a working version, the company has released a guide to a printable example demonstrating the position of each key; the company has also released PCB design files, case 3D print files, and firmware for the keyboard's STMicroelectronics STM32F042F4P6 microcontroller so you can build your own fully-functional version.
More information is available in Google Japan's launch page; the source files are available in a subdirectory of the mozc-devices GitHub repository, along with most previous designs, under the permissive Apache 2.0 license.