New Ideas

GOODS & SERVICES

Revamped Keyboard. A new rearrangement of typewriter keys, supposed to boost the average typist's speed by, 35%, will soon be tested by the U.S. Government. On the new keyboard, the most used keys are closest to the fingers' "home" position on the second row, and closest to the most agile fingers; vowels are on the second row. On a standard keyboard the left hand does 57% of the work; on the new keyboard, only 44%. Invented in 1934 by August Dvorak, now the University of Washington's research director, the new keyboard has drawn scattered cheers, but has never before come this close to actual adoption.

Liquid Sewing Kit. Kling Kote Liquid Cloth, a clothes-mending material said to be stronger than most fabrics, has been put on the market by Chicago's Federal Products Co. The housewife simply holds the two edges of ripped cloth together, coats them with the liquid which when dry can withstand washing in water up to 330DEG.

Air Door. A hot-air curtain that takes the place of a door has been installed at a Kroger Co. supermarket in Cincinnati by St. Louis' American Air Curtain Corp.

Basic principle : heated air is blown downward continually from a grill above the doorway, sucked into a grill in the floor.

The wall of air keeps warm air in the store, the cold outside; the system can be converted to cold air in summer. Kroger's 11-ft.-wide air curtain cost $7,500, will cost about 15-c- an hour to operate.

Economy-Size TV. In hopes of snagging the almost untouched market for television stations in small cities, Thompson Products' Dage Television Division has announced a complete low-power station costing only $50.000, v. $250,000 and up for standard installations. Dage's station was made possible by the Federal Communications Commission's lowering of power and antenna-height requirements in August. The market looks big: FCC has assigned TV channels to 900 communities of less than 50,000 population, but because of high costs, all are still without stations.

Brick Veneer. To get around the disadvantages of conventional bricks, which are heavy, costly to transport, and cannot be laid easily in cold weather, Chicago's Ludowici-Celadon Co. has developed Nail-On, a hard clay brick 3/4 in. thick. It can be nailed to a wall through a lip protruding along its top edge; the bottom edge of the next brick overlaps the lip to form a neat joint. Mortar can be applied whenever builder and weather are ready.

Retail price : 50-c- to 60-c- a sq. ft.

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