Minebea Company, Limited

Junji Yuasa

Satoshi Kawashima

Toshisada Takeda

Yohei Ishii

A keyboard apparatus. The apparatus has a housing including a plurality of key pads, including at least twenty six key pads spatially disposed within the housing. Each of the key pads is depressible upon touch by a user. An optically transparent circuit board is coupled to a backside of each of the key pads. The apparatus has a light guide characterized by a planar optically transparent material having a surface region, a width, a length, and a backside region, and a thickness provided between the surface region and the backside region. The apparatus has a plurality of patterns disposed on the surface region and optically coupled respectively to each of the twenty six key members. In a specific embodiment, the apparatus has a light emitting diode provided within a center region of the surface region to emit electromagnetic radiation. The electromagnetic radiation propagates from the light emitting diode through a portion of the thickness of the light guide to one or more of the plurality of patterns to direct one or more portions of the electromagnetic radiation to respective key pads for lighting the respective key pads.

Growing community of inventors

Fukuroi, Japan

Junji Yuasa