Patent ID: 7891829

Claim:
A keyboard apparatus comprising: 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 being depressible upon touch by a user; an optically transparent circuit board coupled to a backside of each of the key pads; a light guide underlying the circuit board and characterized by a planar optically transparent material having a front surface region, a width, a length, and a backside region, and a thickness provided between the surface region and the backside region; a plurality of patterns disposed on the front surface region of the light guide and optically coupled respectively to each of the twenty-six key members; and a light emitting diode provided within a center region of the surface region to emit electromagnetic radiation, the electromagnetic radiation propagating 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.