On Sat, 19 Jul 2014, gareth wrote:

A straight Morse key has a fulcrum away from you, but your wrist
articulates in front of the key, in a mirror image of that of the key.

Therefore, your wrist is constrained to follow an unnatural arc
when keying.

Have there been any mechanical designs published so that the
keying arc is in the same sense as the wrist arc?

(cf. Watts' parallel motion, perhaps?)

I seem to recall paddles that did nothing, ie it was a key that went side
to side, but no automatic sending of dots (like on a bug) or dots and
dashes (like on a keyer). I think there was a period when such things
existed, I don't think it's even considered in more recent times.

Why not just a pushbutton? Then you can just move your finger, no need
for the whole wrist to move. I was going to say keys had to be as they
are because they handled large current in the early days of radio, but the
form of the key relates to the telegraph, and that wasn't high current.

Michael