Light Pen :It is a pointing or picking device which is similar to a pen that enables the user to

select a displayed graphics items on a screen by directly touching its surface in the vicinity of the item.it draw pictures on the monitor screen.It consists of a photocell and an optical system placed in a small tube.When light pen's tip is moved over the monitor screen and pen button is pressed, its photocell sensing element detects the screen location and sends the corresponding signal to the CPU.Contrary to what its name suggests, the light pen does not project light. Instead, it is a detector of light on the CRT screen and uses a photo diode, photo transistor or some other form of light sensor.The light pen is no longer popular as an input device as it is used to be in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Figure shows the use of a light pen.

Electronic Tablet/Pen:The

tablet and pen in computer graphics describes an electronically sensitive tablet used in conjunction with an electronic stylus. The tablet is a flat surface, separate from the CRT screen, on which the user draws with the pen like stylus to input instructions or to control the cursor.

Thumb wheel:Two thumb wheels are required to control the screen cursor, one to control the
horizontal position and the other for its vertical position. This type of device is often mounted as an integral part of the CRT terminal. The cursor position is indicated by the intersection of a vertical line and a horizontal line on the CRT screen. The two lines are like cross-hair.

Joysticks: It consists of a small, vertical lever (called the stick) mounted on a base that is used to
steer the screen cursor around. The joystick gets its name from the control stick that was used in old airplanes.Joystick is also a pointing device which is used to move cursor position on a monitor screen. It is a stick having a spherical ball at its both lower and upper ends. The lower spherical ball moves in a socket.TheJoystic can be moved in all four directions.The function of joystic is similar to that of a mouse. It is mainly used in Computer Aided Designing(CAD) and playing computer games.

Trackball:

As the name implies, a trackball is a ball that can be rotated with the fingers or palm of the hand to produce screen-cursor movement. Potentiometers, attached to the ball that can be rotated with the fingers or palm of the hand to produce screen-cursor movement. Potentiometers, attached to the ball, measure the amount and direction of rotation

INPUT DEVICES
The first four items in the list provide control over the cursor without any direct physical contact of the screen by the user. The last two devices in the list require the user to control the cursor by touching the screen (or some other flat surface which is related to the screen) with a pen-type device. The thumbwheel device uses two thumbwheels, one to control the horizontal position of the cursor, the other to control the vertical position. This type of device is often mounted as an integral part of the CRT terminal. The cursor in this arrangement is often represented by the intersection of a vertical line and a horizontal line displayed on the CRT screen. The two lines are like crosshairs in a gunsight which span the height and width of the screen. Direction keys on the keyboard are another basic form of cursor control used not only for graphics terminals but also for CRT terminals without graphics capabilities. Four keys are used for each of the four directions in which the cursor can be moved (right or left, and up or down). The joystick apparatus is pictured in Figure. It consists of a box with a vertical toggle stick that can be pushed in any direction to cause the cursor to be moved in that direction. The joystick gets its name from the control stick that was used 10 old airplanes. The tracker ball is pictured in Figure. Its operation is similar to that of the joystick except that an operator-controlled ball is rotated to move the cursor in the desired direction on the screen. The light pen is a pointing device in which the computer seeks to identify The position where the light pen is in contact with the screen. Contrary to what its name suggests, the light pen does not project light. Instead, it is a detector of light on the CRT screen and uses a photodiode, phototransistor, or some other form of light sensor. The light pen can be utilized with a refresh-type CRT but not with a storage tube. This is because the image on the refresh tube is being generated in time sequence. The time sequence is so short that the image appears continuous to the human eye. However, the computer is capable of discerning the time sequence and it

OUTPUT DEVICES:
Pen plotters: The accuracy and quality of the hard-copy plot produced by a pen plotter is considerably greater than the apparent accuracy and quality of the corresponding image on the CRT screen. In the case of the CRT image, the quality of the picture is degraded because of lack of resolution and because of losses in the digital-to-analog conversion through: the display generators. On the other hand, a high-precision pen plotter is capable of achieving a hard-copy drawing whose accuracy is nearly consistent with the digital definitions in the CAD data base. The pen plotter uses a mechanical ink pen (either wet ink or ballpoint) to write on paper through relative movement of the pen and paper. There are two basic types of pen plotters currently in use: Drum plotters Fiat-bed plotters Hard-copy unit: A hard-copy unit is a machine that can make copies from the same image data layed on the CRT screen. The image on the screen can be duplicated in a matter of seconds. The copies can be used as records of intermediate steps in the design process or when rough hard copies of the screen are needed quickly. The hard copies 45 produced from these units are not suitable as final drawings because the accuracy and quality of the reproduction is not nearly as good as the output of a pen plotter. Most hard-copy units are dry silver copiers that use light-sensitive paper exposed through a narrow CRT window inside the copier. The window is typically 8. in. (216 mm), corresponding to the width of the paper, by about . in. (12 mm) wide. The paper is exposed by moving it past the window and coordinating the CRT beam to gradually transfer the image. A heated roller inside the copier is used to develop the exposed paper. The size of the paper is usually limited on these hardcopy units to 8. by II in. Another drawback is that the dry silver copies will darken with time when they are left exposed to normal light. Electrostatic plotters: Hard-copy units are relatively fast but their accuracy and resolution are poor. Pen plotters are highly accurate but plotting time can take many minutes (up to a half-hour or longer for complicated drawings). The electrostatic plotter offers a compromise between these two types in terms of speed and accuracy. It is almost as fast as the hard-copy unit and almost as accurate as the pen plotter. The electrostatic copier consists of a series of wire styli mounted on a bar which spans the width of the charge-sensitive paper. The styli have a density of up to 200 per linear inch. The paper is gradually moved past the bar and certain styli are activated to place dots on the paper. By coordinating the generation of the dots with the paper travel, the image is progressively transferred from the data base into hardcopy form. The dots overlap each other slightly to achieve continuity. For example, a series of adjacent dots gives the appearance of a continuous line. A limitation of the electrostatic plotter is that the data must be in the raster format (i.e., in the same format used to drive the raster-type CRT) in order to be readily converted into hard copy using the electrostatic method. If the data are not in raster format, some type of conversion is required to change them into the required format. The conversion mechanism is usually based on a combination of software and hardware. An advantage of the electrostatic plotter which is shared with the drum-type pen plotter is that the length of the paper is virtually unlimited. Typical plotting widths might be up to 6 ft (1.83 m). Another advantage is that the electrostatic plotter can be utilized as a high-speed line printer, capable of up to 1200 lines of text per minute.