Everyone who's watched at least a few episodes of Star Trek knows what Klingon is. There are quite a few people out there (better said, quite a few hardcore fans of the Star Trek series) that have gone as far as speaking to each other in the artificially-developed Klingon language. They will soon be able to write to each other in Klingon as well, since a company called Cherry Keyboards has just launched on the market the world's first Klingon Language Wired Standard Keyboard.

Before going into further details regarding this keyboard (whose main selling point, is, quite obviously, the fact that it allows users to write using Klingon fonts), let's talk a bit about the Klingon language, which, according to Guinness World Records for 2006, it is the most spoken fictional language by number of speakers. The language (or at least its basic sound and a few words) were created by none other than one of the actors playing one of the most loved characters from the first Star Trek series, “Scotty” (James Doohan). However, it was later on seriously improved and turned into an actual language by Marc Okrand.

As expected, the Klingon Language Wired Standard Keyboard is not based on who knows what alien artifact, but on a very real computer peripheral, the G83-6000 Comfort keyboard. The device is a rather standard PS/2 QWERTY keyboard, featuring 105 keys with laser-etched, abrasion proof keycaps. Furthermore, the device uses NTK switch and rubber sheet technologies, which should provide, according to the manufacturer, a very long functioning life, of around 20 million keystrokes.

Now, the Klingon version is still not available on the market (since the first units will be ready for shipment towards the year's end), but the manufacturer does point out a price, namely 43 pounds sterling (around 62 US dollars). While this is way too big a sum (at least for yours truly), I'm sure that it will sell really well, given the fact that, after all, the number of Star Trek fans out there is quite large (and will certainly get even larger, with the new movie coming out).


We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .