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Touchscreen - Wikipedia

Touchscreen - what is it?

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
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Touchscreen - Wikipedia

Touchscreen - what is it?

Uploaded by

betil24684
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Touchscreen

A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of display that can detect


touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch
panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is
typically layered on the top of the electronic visual display of a
device. Touchscreens are commonly found in smartphones, tablets,
laptops, and other electronic devices.

The display is often an LCD, AMOLED or OLED display.

A user can give input or control the information processing system A user operating a touchscreen
through simple or multi-touch gestures by touching the screen with a
special stylus or one or more fingers.[1] Some touchscreens use
ordinary or specially coated gloves to work, while others may only
work using a special stylus or pen. The user can use the touchscreen
to react to what is displayed and, if the software allows, to control
how it is displayed; for example, zooming to increase the text size.

A touchscreen enables the user to interact directly with what is


displayed, instead of using a mouse, touchpad, or other such devices
(other than a stylus, which is optional for most modern
touchscreens).[2]

Touchscreens are common in devices such as smartphones, handheld


game consoles, and personal computers. They are common in point-
Smart thermostat with touchscreen
of-sale (POS) systems, automated teller machines (ATMs), and
electronic voting machines. They can also be attached to computers
or, as terminals, to networks. They play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as personal
digital assistants (PDAs) and some e-readers. Touchscreens are important in educational settings such as
classrooms or on college campuses.[3]

The popularity of smartphones, tablets, and many types of information appliances has driven the demand and
acceptance of common touchscreens for portable and functional electronics. Touchscreens are found in the
medical field, heavy industry, automated teller machines (ATMs), and kiosks such as museum displays or
room automation, where keyboard and mouse systems do not allow a suitably intuitive, rapid, or accurate
interaction by the user with the display's content.

Historically, the touchscreen sensor and its accompanying controller-based firmware have been made
available by a wide array of after-market system integrators, and not by display, chip, or motherboard
manufacturers. Display manufacturers and chip manufacturers have acknowledged the trend toward
acceptance of touchscreens as a user interface component and have begun to integrate touchscreens into the
fundamental design of their products.

History
One predecessor of the modern touchscreen includes stylus based
systems.

1946 DIRECT LIGHT PEN - A patent was filed by Philco Company


for a stylus designed for sports telecasting which, when placed
against an intermediate cathode ray tube display (CRT) would
amplify and add to the original signal. Effectively, this was used for
temporarily drawing arrows or circles onto a live television
broadcast, as described in US 2487641A (https://worldwide.espacene The prototype[4] x-y mutual
t.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US2487641A), Denk, William capacitance touchscreen (left)
E, "Electronic pointer for television images", issued 1949-11-08. developed at CERN[5][6] in 1977 by
Frank Beck, a British electronics
1962 OPTICAL - The first version of a touchscreen which operated engineer, for the control room of
independently of the light produced from the screen was patented by CERN's accelerator SPS (Super
Proton Synchrotron). This was a
AT&T Corporation US 3016421A (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/t
further development of the self-
extdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US3016421A), Harmon, Leon D, capacitance screen (right), also
"Electrographic transmitter", issued 1962-01-09. This touchscreen developed by Stumpe at CERN[7] in
utilized a matrix of collimated lights shining orthogonally across the 1972.
touch surface. When a beam is interrupted by a stylus, the
photodetectors which no longer are receiving a signal can be used to
determine where the interruption is. Later iterations of matrix based touchscreens built upon this by adding
more emitters and detectors to improve resolution, pulsing emitters to improve optical signal to noise ratio,
and a nonorthogonal matrix to remove shadow readings when using multi-touch.

1963 INDIRECT LIGHT PEN - Later inventions built upon this system to free telewriting styli from their
mechanical bindings. By transcribing what a user draws onto a computer, it could be saved for future use.
See US 3089918A (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US3089918A), Graham,
Robert E, "Telewriting apparatus", issued 1963-05-14.

1965 CAPACITANCE AND RESISTANCE - The first finger driven touchscreen was developed by Eric
Johnson, of the Royal Radar Establishment located in Malvern, England, who described his work on
capacitive touchscreens in a short article published in 1965[8][9] and then more fully—with photographs and
diagrams—in an article published in 1967.[10]

MID-60s ULTRASONIC CURTAIN - Another precursor of touchscreens, an ultrasonic-curtain-based


pointing device in front of a terminal display, had been developed by a team around Rainer Mallebrein at
Telefunken Konstanz for an air traffic control system.[11] In 1970, this evolved into a device named
"Touchinput-Einrichtung" ("touch input facility") for the SIG 50 terminal utilizing a conductively coated
glass screen in front of the display.[12][11] This was patented in 1971 and the patent was granted a couple of
years later.[12][11] The same team had already invented and marketed the Rollkugel mouse RKS 100-86 for
the SIG 100-86 a couple of years earlier.[12]

1968 CAPACITANCE - The application of touch technology for air traffic control was described in an
article published in 1968.[13] Frank Beck and Bent Stumpe, engineers from CERN (European Organization
for Nuclear Research), developed a transparent touchscreen in the early 1970s,[14] based on Stumpe's work
at a television factory in the early 1960s. Then manufactured by CERN, and shortly after by industry
partners,[15] it was put to use in 1973.[16]

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