Sure; physical chording keyboards have been around for decades: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chording_keyboard

Indeed, they are called Stenotypes. Court reporters write on them at rates of 180 wpm, real champions reach twice that. But this ASETNIOP that's sold here says that experienced users reach just 80 wpm. What's up there, is it poor design?

Not... quite. Court stenographers only record speech, and it turns out that the fastest way to do this is by recording spoken syllables instead of letters and using a huge pile of shorthand to boot. Some more info here: http://plover.stenoknight.com/2010/06/steno-101-lesson-zero....

I suspect the lack of any tactile/haptic feedback introduces a small refractory period between keys/letters.

Also, the chording behavior has a timeout between keypresses. So if you type "a" & "s" quickly (intending them to be separate), it is interpreted as a single "as" chord. You have to wait a bit after each keyup.

I'd like to just re-map my current keyboard to accept this method. Of course, I'd only have one button for the thumbs...