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99-413: A user can give input or control the information processing system through simple or multi-touch gestures by touching the screen with a special stylus or one or more fingers. 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

198-417: A monochrome CRT touchscreen that functioned both as display and sole method of input. The ECC replaced the traditional mechanical stereo , fan, heater and air conditioner controls and displays, and was capable of providing very detailed and specific information about the vehicle's cumulative and current operating status in real time . The ECC was standard equipment on the 1985–1989 Buick Riviera and later

297-474: A "tap-click" gesture to select while maintaining location with another finger are also described. In 1991, Pierre Wellner advanced the topic publishing about his multi-touch "Digital Desk", which supported multi-finger and pinching motions. Various companies expanded upon these inventions in the beginning of the twenty-first century. Between 1999 and 2005, the company Fingerworks developed various multi-touch technologies, including Touchstream keyboards and

396-480: A 20 MB hard drive. In order to keep up-to-date information during the event, the database of visitor information was updated and remotely transferred to the computer terminals each night. Using the touch screens, visitors were able to find information about the exposition’s rides, attractions, performances, facilities, and the surrounding areas. Visitors could also select between information displayed in English and Japanese;

495-446: A bad reputation of being imprecise until 1988. Most user-interface books would state that touchscreen selections were limited to targets larger than the average finger. At the time, selections were done in such a way that a target was selected as soon as the finger came over it, and the corresponding action was performed immediately. Errors were common, due to parallax or calibration problems, leading to user frustration. "Lift-off strategy"

594-412: A capacitive touch screen with a fixed number of programmable buttons presented on a display. The screen was to consist of a set of capacitors etched into a film of copper on a sheet of glass, each capacitor being constructed so that a nearby flat conductor, such as the surface of a finger, would increase the capacitance by a significant amount. The capacitors were to consist of fine lines etched in copper on

693-763: A comprehensive account of the contributions of RRE to physics to the Royal Society. Although less conspicuous among academic scientists, these divisions were major players in the defence community, both in policy decision making and as an interface with industry. Development and production contracts brought staff of several companies on site, and extramural contracts strengthened ties with industry still further. "in radar alone: Plessey and Decca for aerials and waveguides, Plessey , Hilger & Watts, Clarke Chapman and Curran for millimetre-wave radar, and Mullard for precision bombing and radar reconnaissance". On returning to RRE as Director in 1962, George Macfarlane reorganized

792-530: A detection means was possible. After a simple practical demonstration, a prototype system was built at Orfordness on the east coast of England. While on a Sunday drive in the area, Watt noticed the large and unused Bawdsey Manor , and this was leased by the Air Ministry to become first radar research centre in the country. Soon after taking over Bawdsey in 1936, the British Army heard of their efforts and formed

891-543: A device similar to the Microsoft Surface was shown. It took up an executive's entire desk and was used to communicate with the Master Control computer . In the 2002 film Minority Report , Tom Cruise uses a set of gloves that resemble a multi-touch interface to browse through information. In the 2005 film The Island , another form of a multi-touch computer was seen where the professor, played by Sean Bean , has

990-422: A finger or an object touches the surface, causing the light to scatter, the reflection of which is caught with sensors or cameras that send the data to software that dictates response to the touch, depending on the type of reflection measured. Optical technologies include: Acoustic and radio-frequency wave-based technologies include: Multi-touch touchscreen gestures enable predefined motions to interact with

1089-428: A government body called Dstl ( Defence Science and Technology Laboratory ) and a company destined for privatisation, which became QinetiQ . The technical departments of RRE were grouped, initially, into six Divisions: airborne radar, ground radar, guided weapons, basic techniques, physics, and engineering. The organization and personnel are described further, in a collection of linked web sites. W. J. Richards, CBE,

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1188-542: A group to work with them to develop ground-based applications. The first project of this "Army Cell" was a ranging system for anti-aircraft artillery , but they soon added the Coast Defence radars and began work on the proximity fuse . At the outbreak of the war in 1939, the location of Bawdsey, right on the east coast, was considered far too exposed to attack. The Air Ministry team quickly moved to Dundee in Scotland, where

1287-422: A keyboard. An effective integration of this technology was aimed at helping flight crews maintain a high level of situational awareness of all major aspects of the vehicle operations including the flight path, the functioning of various aircraft systems, and moment-to-moment human interactions. EARLY 80s EVALUATATION FOR CARS - also, in the early 1980s, General Motors tasked its Delco Electronics division with

1386-416: A matrix of collimated lights shining orthogonally across the 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

1485-399: A means of information or exhibit display. Multi-touch has been implemented in several different ways, depending on the size and type of interface. The most popular form are mobile devices, tablets , touchtables and walls. Both touchtables and touch walls project an image through acrylic or glass, and then back-light the image with LEDs. Touch surfaces can also be made pressure-sensitive by

1584-436: A multi-touch desktop to organize files, based on an early version of Microsoft Surface (not be confused with the tablet computers which now bear that name). In 2007, the television series CSI: Miami introduced both surface and wall multi-touch displays in its sixth season. Multi-touch technology can be seen in the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace , where MI6 uses a touch interface to browse information about

1683-461: 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 , Graham, Robert E, "Telewriting apparatus", issued 1963-05-14   . 1965 CAPACITANCE AND RESISTANCE - The first finger driven touchscreen

1782-485: A plastic pen and a plastic board with a transparent window where pen presses are detected. It was used primarily with a drawing software application. 1985 MULTI-TOUCH CAPACITANCE - The University of Toronto group, including Bill Buxton, developed a multi-touch tablet that used capacitance rather than bulky camera-based optical sensing systems (see History of multi-touch ). 1985 USED FOR POINT OF SALE - The first commercially available graphical point-of-sale (POS) software

1881-497: A project aimed at replacing an automobile's non-essential functions (i.e. other than throttle , transmission , braking , and steering ) from mechanical or electro-mechanical systems with solid state alternatives wherever possible. The finished device was dubbed the ECC for "Electronic Control Center", a digital computer and software control system hardwired to various peripheral sensors , servomechanisms , solenoids , antenna and

1980-425: 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. 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

2079-485: A reflection of Australia’s overseas tourist market in the 1980s. It is worth noting that Telecom’s Expo Info system was based on an earlier system employed at Expo 86 in Vancouver , Canada . 1990 SINGLE AND MULTI-TOUCH GESTURES - Sears et al. (1990) gave a review of academic research on single and multi-touch human–computer interaction of the time, describing gestures such as rotating knobs, adjusting sliders, and swiping

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2178-419: A response to the gesture event. In the past few years, several companies have released products that use multi-touch. In an attempt to make the expensive technology more accessible, hobbyists have also published methods of constructing DIY touchscreens. Capacitive technologies include: Resistive technologies include: Optical touch technology is based on image sensor technology. It functions when

2277-419: A rugged multi-touch capacitive touchscreen, that could sense through a rigid, protective overlay - the sort later required for a mobile phone, was ever developed or patented by Boie. Many of these citations rely on anecdotal evidence from Bill Buxton of Bell Labs. However, Bill Buxton did not have much luck getting his hands on this technology. As he states in the citation: "Our assumption (false, as it turned out)

2376-414: A sheet of glass – fine enough (80 μm) and sufficiently far apart (80 μm) to be invisible. In the final device, a simple lacquer coating prevented the fingers from actually touching the capacitors. In the same year, MIT described a keyboard with variable graphics capable of multi-touch detection. In the early 1980s, The University of Toronto 's Input Research Group were among the earliest to explore

2475-567: A shift key while typing another were not possible. Exceptions to these were a "cross-wire" multi-touch reconfigurable touchscreen keyboard/display developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1970s and the 16 button capacitive multi-touch screen developed at CERN in 1972 for the controls of the Super Proton Synchrotron that were under construction. In 1976 a new x-y capacitive screen, based on

2574-500: A simple mouse or keypad that capacitively sensed just one finger through a thin insulator. Although not claimed or even mentioned in the patent, this technology could potentially have been used as a capacitance touchscreen. 1993 FIRST RESISTIVE TOUCHSCREEN PHONE - IBM released the IBM Simon , which is the first touchscreen phone. EARLY 90s ABANDONED GAME CONTROLLER - An early attempt at a handheld game console with touchscreen controls

2673-573: A simple x/y pen plotter, eliminating the need for expensive and complicated sputter coating, laser ablation, screen printing or etching. The resulting, incredibly flexible, touchscreen film, less than 100 microns thick, could be attached by static or non-setting weak adhesive to one side of a sheet of glass, for sensing through that glass. Early versions of this device were controlled by the PIC16C54 microchip. 1994 FIRST PUB GAME WITH TOUCHSCREEN - Appearing in pubs in 1994, JPM's Monopoly SWP (skill with prizes)

2772-493: A team around Rainer Mallebrein  [ de ] at Telefunken Konstanz for an air traffic control system. 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. This was patented in 1971 and the patent was granted a couple of years later. The same team had already invented and marketed

2871-597: A television factory in the early 1960s. Then manufactured by CERN, and shortly after by industry partners, it was put to use in 1973. 1972 OPTICAL - A group at the University of Illinois filed for a patent on an optical touchscreen that became a standard part of the Magnavox Plato IV Student Terminal and thousands were built for this purpose. These touchscreens had a crossed array of 16×16 infrared position sensors, each composed of an LED on one edge of

2970-562: A time, and few have had the capability to sense how hard one is touching. This has changed with the commercialization of multi-touch technology, and the Apple Watch being released with a force-sensitive display in April 2015. 2015 BISTATE PROJECTED CAPACITANCE - When used as a Projected Capacitance touchscreen, in mutual capacitance mode, diagonal wiring requires each I/O line to be capable of switching between two states (bistate), an output some of

3069-456: A touchscreen slider, which was later cited as prior art in the lock screen patent litigation between Apple and other touchscreen mobile phone vendors (in relation to U.S. patent 7,657,849 ). 1991 INERTIAL CONTROL - From 1991 to 1992, the Sun Star7 prototype PDA implemented a touchscreen with inertial scrolling . 1993 CAPACITANCE MOUSE / KEYPAD - Bob Boie of AT&T Bell Labs, patented

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3168-487: A transparent implementation of an existing opaque touchpad technology, U.S. patent No.  3,911,215, October 7, 1975, which had been developed by Elographics' founder George Samuel Hurst . The resulting resistive technology touch screen was first shown on the World's Fair at Knoxville in 1982. 1982 MULTI-TOUCH CAMERA - Multi-touch technology began in 1982, when the University of Toronto 's Input Research Group developed

3267-467: Is optical touch technology , based on image sensor technology. In computing , multi-touch is technology which enables a touchpad or touchscreen to recognize more than one or more than two points of contact with the surface. Apple popularized the term "multi-touch" in 2007 with which it implemented additional functionality, such as pinch to zoom or to activate certain subroutines attached to predefined gestures . The two different uses of

3366-456: Is attached to the touch surface. Usually, separate companies make the ASIC and screen that combine into a touch screen; conversely, a touchpad's surface and ASIC are usually manufactured by the same company. There have been large companies in recent years that have expanded into the growing multi-touch industry, with systems designed for everything from the casual user to multinational organizations. It

3465-634: 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). Touchscreens are common in devices such as smartphones , handheld game consoles , and personal computers . They are common in point-of-sale (POS) systems, automated teller machines (ATMs), electronic voting machines , and automobile infotainment systems and controls. They can also be attached to computers or, as terminals, to networks. They play

3564-466: Is now common for laptop manufacturers to include multi-touch touchpads on their laptops, and tablet computers respond to touch input rather than traditional stylus input and it is supported by many recent operating systems . A few companies are focusing on large-scale surface computing rather than personal electronics, either large multi-touch tables or wall surfaces. These systems are generally used by government organizations, museums, and companies as

3663-425: Is reduced and the users' hands don't obstruct the display. Instead of placing windows all over the screen, the windowing manager, Con10uum, uses a linear paradigm, with multi-touch used to navigate between and arrange the windows. An area at the right side of the touch screen brings up a global context menu, and a similar strip at the left side brings up application-specific menus. An open source community preview of

3762-666: Is seated or the floorpad on which the user is standing. In 2007, NORTD labs open source system offered its CUBIT (multi-touch) . Small-scale touch devices rapidly became commonplace in 2008. The number of touch screen telephones was expected to increase from 200,000 shipped in 2006 to 21 million in 2012. In May 2015, Apple was granted a patent for a "fusion keyboard", which turns individual physical keys into multi-touch buttons. Apple has retailed and distributed numerous products using multi-touch technology, most prominently including its iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet. Additionally, Apple also holds several patents related to

3861-424: Is shown to be performing multiple multi-touch hand gestures on a large touch wall. In the 2009, the film District 9 the interface used to control the alien ship features similar technology. 10/GUI is a proposed new user interface paradigm. Created in 2009 by R. Clayton Miller, it combines multi-touch input with a new windowing manager . It splits the touch surface away from the screen, so that user fatigue

3960-451: The Rollkugel mouse RKS 100-86 for the SIG 100-86 a couple of years earlier. 1968 CAPACITANCE - The application of touch technology for air traffic control was described in an article published in 1968. Frank Beck and Bent Stumpe , engineers from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), developed a transparent touchscreen in the early 1970s, based on Stumpe's work at

4059-629: The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 1996. The North Site was closed in 2003 and the work was consolidated at the South Site, while the former North Site was sold off for housing developments. Qinetiq now occupies a part of the former RSRE site. The earliest concerted effort to develop radar in the UK dates to 1935, and Robert Watt replied to an Air Ministry question about radio-based death rays by stating they were impossible, but using radio as

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4158-801: The Ministry of Technology , then to the Ministry of Aviation Supply, in 1970, and to the Ministry of Defence in 1971. In 1976 RRE merged with the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE) to form the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE), which became part of the Defence Research Agency (DRA) in 1991. Later (1995), DRA was absorbed into DERA , the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. DERA split on 2 June 2001 into two parts,

4257-404: The 1970s. CERN started using multi-touch screens as early as 1976 for the controls of the Super Proton Synchrotron . Capacitive multi-touch displays were popularized by Apple 's iPhone in 2007. Multi-touch may be used to implement additional functionality, such as pinch to zoom or to activate certain subroutines attached to predefined gestures using gesture recognition . Several uses of

4356-632: The 1988–1989 Buick Reatta , but was unpopular with consumers—partly due to the technophobia of some traditional Buick customers, but mostly because of costly technical problems suffered by the ECC's touchscreen which would render climate control or stereo operation impossible. 1985 GRAPHIC TABLET - Sega released the Terebi Oekaki, also known as the Sega Graphic Board, for the SG-1000 video game console and SC-3000 home computer . It consisted of

4455-509: The CMU system was optical. In 1985, the canonical multitouch pinch-to-zoom gesture was demonstrated, with coordinated graphics, on CMU's system. In October 1985, Steve Jobs signed a non-disclosure agreement to tour CMU's Sensor Frame multi-touch lab. In 1990, Sears et al. published a review of academic research on single and multi-touch touchscreen human–computer interaction of the time, describing single touch gestures such as rotating knobs, swiping

4554-778: The Con10uum window manager was made available in November, 2009. Royal Radar Establishment The Royal Radar Establishment was a research centre in Malvern, Worcestershire in the United Kingdom . It was formed in 1953 as the Radar Research Establishment by the merger of the Air Ministry 's Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) and the British Army 's Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE). It

4653-433: The U.S. Patent and Trademark office declared that the "pinch-to-zoom" functionality was predicted by U.S. Patent # 7,844,915 relating to gestures on touch screens, filed by Bran Ferren and Daniel Hillis in 2005, as was inertial scrolling, thus invalidated a key claims of Apple's patent. In 2001, Microsoft's table-top touch platform, Microsoft PixelSense (formerly Surface) started development, which interacts with both

4752-405: The addition of a pressure-sensitive coating that flexes differently depending on how firmly it is pressed, altering the reflection. Handheld technologies use a panel that carries an electrical charge. When a finger touches the screen, the touch disrupts the panel's electrical field. The disruption is registered as a computer event (gesture) and may be sent to the software, which may then initiate

4851-496: The capacitance touch screens developed in 1972 by Danish electronics engineer Bent Stumpe , was developed at CERN . This technology, allowing an exact location of the different touch points, was used to develop a new type of human machine interface (HMI) for the control room of the Super Proton Synchrotron particle accelerator. In a handwritten note dated 11 March 1972, Stumpe presented his proposed solution –

4950-420: The city of Brisbane , Australia hosted Expo 88 , whose theme was “leisure in the age of technology”. To support the event and provide information to expo visitors, Telecom Australia (now Telstra ) erected 8 kiosks around the expo site with a total of 56 touch screen information consoles, being specially modified Sony Videotex Workstations. Each system was also equipped with a videodisc player, speakers, and

5049-484: The criminal Dominic Greene. In the 2008 film The Day the Earth Stood Still , Microsoft's Surface was used. The television series NCIS: Los Angeles , which premiered 2009, makes use of multi-touch surfaces and wall panels as an initiative to go digital. In a 2008, an episode of the television series The Simpsons , Lisa Simpson travels to the underwater headquarters of Mapple to visit Steve Mobbs, who

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5148-477: The device and software. An increasing number of devices like smartphones , tablet computers , laptops or desktop computers have functions that are triggered by multi-touch gestures. Years before it was a viable consumer product, popular culture portrayed potential uses of multi-touch technology in the future, including in several installments of the Star Trek franchise. In the 1982 Disney sci-fi film Tron

5247-447: The diagram. There are a number of touchscreen technologies, with different methods of sensing touch. Multi-touch In computing , multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen ) to recognize the presence of more than one point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CERN , MIT , University of Toronto , Carnegie Mellon University and Bell Labs in

5346-477: The display. In January 2007, multi-touch technology became mainstream with the iPhone , and in its iPhone announcement Apple even stated it "invented multi touch", however both the function and the term predate the announcement or patent requests, except for the area of capacitive mobile screens, which did not exist before Fingerworks/Apple's technology (Fingerworks filed patents in 2001–2005, subsequent multi-touch refinements were patented by Apple ). However,

5445-538: The first human-input multi-touch system, using a frosted-glass panel with a camera placed behind the glass. 1983 OPTICAL - An optical touchscreen was used on the HP-150 starting in 1983. The HP 150 was one of the world's earliest commercial touchscreen computers. HP mounted their infrared transmitters and receivers around the bezel of a 9-inch Sony cathode ray tube (CRT). 1983 MULTI-TOUCH FORCE SENSING TOUCHSCREEN - Bob Boie of AT&T Bell Labs, used capacitance to track

5544-454: The first touch screens in the late 1960s. In 1972, Control Data released the PLATO IV computer, an infrared terminal used for educational purposes, which employed single-touch points in a 16×16 array user interface. These early touchscreens only registered one point of touch at a time. On-screen keyboards (a well-known feature today) were thus awkward to use, because key-rollover and holding down

5643-677: The former Air Ministry Experimental Station became the Air Ministry Research Establishment (AMRE). The Army group moved to Christchurch , outside Bournemouth , becoming the Air Defence Experimental Establishment (ADEE). The facilities in Dundee proved far too small and isolated, and in May 1940 they moved again, this time to Worth Matravers on the south coast of England, also a short distance from Bournemouth. This

5742-551: The front of the screen. Stumpe and Beck developed a self-capacitance touchscreen in 1972, and a mutual capacitance touchscreen in 1977. Both these devices could only sense the finger by direct touch or through a thin insulating film. This was 11 microns thick according to Stumpe's 1977 report. 1984 TOUCHPAD - Fujitsu released a touch pad for the Micro 16 to accommodate the complexity of kanji characters, which were stored as tiled graphics. 1986 GRAPHIC TABLET - A graphic touch tablet

5841-540: The iGesture Pad. in the early 2000s Alan Hedge , professor of human factors and ergonomics at Cornell University published several studies about this technology. In 2005, Apple acquired Fingerworks and its multi-touch technology. In 2004, French start-up JazzMutant developed the Lemur Input Device , a music controller that became in 2005 the first commercial product to feature a proprietary transparent multi-touch screen, allowing direct, ten-finger manipulation on

5940-528: The implementation of multi-touch in user interfaces, however the legitimacy of some patents has been disputed. Apple additionally attempted to register "Multi-touch" as a trademark in the United States—however its request was denied by the United States Patent and Trademark Office because it considered the term generic . Multi-touch sensing and processing occurs via an ASIC sensor that

6039-429: The invention of a wire based touchscreen in 1994, where one 25 micron diameter, insulation coated wire replaced about 30 of these 80 micron wide tracks, and could also accurately sense fingers through thick glass. Screen masking, caused by the copper, was reduced from 50% to less than 0.5%. The use of fine wire meant that very large touchscreens, several meters wide, could be plotted onto a thin polyester support film with

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6138-475: The length of the horizontal sensing elements increases as the width of the touchscreen increases. Eventually, a limit is hit where the resistance gets so great that the touchscreen can no longer function properly. The patent describes how the use of diagonal elements ensures that the length of any element never exceeds 1.414 times the height ⌈ H 2 ⌋ {\textstyle \left\lceil H{\sqrt {2}}\right\rfloor } of

6237-442: The mechanical changes in thickness of a soft, deformable overlay membrane when one or more physical objects interact with it; the flexible surface being easily replaced, if damaged by these objects. The patent states "the tactile sensor arrangements may be utilized as a touch screen". Many derivative sources retrospectively describe Boie as making a major advancement with his touchscreen technology; but no evidence has been found that

6336-560: 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

6435-403: The monitor line scans. About 600 of these were sold for this purpose, retailing at £50 apiece, which was very cheap for the time. Working through very thick glass made it ideal for operation in a "hostile" environment, such as a pub. Although reflected light from the copper wires was noticeable under certain lighting conditions, this problem was eliminated by using tinted glass. The reflection issue

6534-464: The north side of Malvern in May 1942. This, of course, resulted in yet another name change to the RRDE. The TRE followed shortly thereafter, taking up residence in buildings across from Malvern College on the south side of town. TRE was part of the Ministry of Supply and, when it was formed, so was RRE. In 1959, control passed to the Ministry of Aviation . When this was abolished in 1967, control passed to

6633-589: The original signal. Effectively, this was used for temporarily drawing arrows or circles onto a live television broadcast, as described in US 2487641A , Denk, William E, "Electronic pointer for television images", issued 1949-11-08   . 1962 OPTICAL - The first version of a touchscreen which operated independently of the light produced from the screen was patented by AT&T Corporation US 3016421A , Harmon, Leon D, "Electrographic transmitter", issued 1962-01-09   . This touchscreen utilized

6732-403: The person was pressing on the glass), the system was somewhat pressure-sensitive as well. Of note, this system was input only and not able to display graphics. In 1983, Bell Labs at Murray Hill published a comprehensive discussion of touch-screen based interfaces, though it makes no mention of multiple fingers. In the same year, the video-based Video Place/Video Desk system of Myron Krueger

6831-905: The release of the Nintendo DS in 2004. 2007 MOBILE PHONE WITH CAPACITANCE - The first mobile phone with a capacitive touchscreen was LG Prada , released in May 2007 (which was before the first iPhone released). By 2009, touchscreen-enabled mobile phones were becoming trendy and quickly gaining popularity in both basic and advanced devices. In Quarter-4 2009 for the first time, a majority of smartphones (i.e. not all mobile phones) shipped with touchscreens over non-touch. 2013 RESISTIVE VERSUS PROJECTED CAPACITANCE SALES - In 2007, 93% of touchscreens shipped were resistive and only 4% were projected capacitance. In 2013, 3% of touchscreens shipped were resistive and 96% were projected capacitance (see page 5). 2015 FORCE SENSING TOUCHSCREENS - Until recently, most consumer touchscreens could only sense one point of contact at

6930-470: The report on the programming language ALGOL 68 was published. On 20–24 July 1970, a working conference was arranged by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) to discuss the problems of implementing the language. A small team from RRE attended to present their compiler , written by I. F. Currie, Susan G. Bond , and J. D. Morrison. ALGOL 68 was complex: implementing it

7029-411: The screen and a matched phototransistor on the other edge, all mounted in front of a monochrome plasma display panel. This arrangement could sense any fingertip-sized opaque object in close proximity to the screen. 1973 MULTI-TOUCH CAPACITANCE - In 1973, Beck and Stumpe published another article describing their capacitive touchscreen. This indicated that it was capable of multi-touch but this feature

7128-405: The screen to activate a switch (or a U-shaped gesture for a toggle switch), and touchscreen keyboards (including a study that showed that users could type at 25 words per minute for a touchscreen keyboard compared with 58 words per minute for a standard keyboard, with multi-touch hypothesized to improve data entry rate); multi-touch gestures such as selecting a range of a line, connecting objects, and

7227-538: The screen to activate a switch (or a U-shaped gesture for a toggle switch). The HCIL team developed and studied small touchscreen keyboards (including a study that showed users could type at 25 wpm on a touchscreen keyboard), aiding their introduction on mobile devices. They also designed and implemented multi-touch gestures such as selecting a range of a line, connecting objects, and a "tap-click" gesture to select while maintaining location with another finger. 1990 TOUCHSCREEN SLIDER AND TOGGLE SWITCHES - HCIL demonstrated

7326-463: The software side of multi-touch input systems. A 1982 system at the University of Toronto used a frosted-glass panel with a camera placed behind the glass. When a finger or several fingers pressed on the glass, the camera would detect the action as one or more black spots on an otherwise white background, allowing it to be registered as an input. Since the size of a dot was dependent on pressure (how hard

7425-442: The technical departments into: Military and Civil Systems (comprising Ground Radar and Air Traffic Control, Guided Weapons and Airborne Radar groups), Physics and Electronics (comprising Physics and Electronic Groups) and Engineering. "Despite the policy shift away from fighters ... to guided weapons for UK air defence, ... RRE continued to argue for strike aircraft and kept up the necessary radar research programs." In December 1968,

7524-450: The term multi-touch resulted from the quick developments in this field, and many companies using the term to market older technology which is called gesture-enhanced single-touch or several other terms by other companies and researchers. Several other similar or related terms attempt to differentiate between whether a device can exactly determine or only approximate the location of different points of contact to further differentiate between

7623-440: The term resulted from the quick developments in this field, and many companies using the term to market older technology which is called gesture-enhanced single-touch or several other terms by other companies and researchers. Several other similar or related terms attempt to differentiate between whether a device can exactly determine or only approximate the location of different points of contact to further differentiate between

7722-516: The time and an input at other times. I/Os are inputs most of the time, but, once every scan, one of the I/Os has to take its turn at being an output, the remaining input I/Os sensing any signals it generates. The I/O lines, therefore, may have to change from input to output, and vice versa, many times a second. This new design won an Electronics Weekly Elektra Award in 2017. 2021 FIRST "INFINITELY WIDE" TOUCHSCREEN PATENT - With standard x/y array touchscreens,

7821-537: The touchscreen, no matter how wide it is. This could be reduced to 1.15 times the height, if opposing diagonal elements intersect at 60 degrees instead of 90 degrees. The elongated touchscreen could be controlled by a single processor, or the distant ends could be controlled totally independently by different processors, linked by a synchronizing processor in the overlapping middle section. The number of unique intersections could be increased by allowing individual sensing elements to run in two opposing directions - as shown in

7920-449: The trend toward acceptance of touchscreens as a user interface component and have begun to integrate touchscreens into the fundamental design of their products. 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 (CRT) display would amplify and add to

8019-478: The user's touch and their electronic devices and became commercial on May 29, 2007. Similarly, in 2001, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) began development of a multi-touch, multi-user system called DiamondTouch . In 2008, the Diamondtouch became a commercial product and is also based on capacitance, but able to differentiate between multiple simultaneous users or rather, the chairs in which each user

8118-415: The various technological capabilities, but they are often used as synonyms in marketing. The use of touchscreen technology predates both multi-touch technology and the personal computer. Early synthesizer and electronic instrument builders like Hugh Le Caine and Robert Moog experimented with using touch-sensitive capacitance sensors to control the sounds made by their instruments. IBM began building

8217-495: The various technological capabilities, but they are often used as synonyms in marketing. Multi-touch is commonly implemented using capacitive sensing technology in mobile devices and smart devices . A capacitive touchscreen typically consists of a capacitive touch sensor , application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) controller and digital signal processor (DSP) fabricated from CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor ) technology. A more recent alternative approach

8316-636: Was Sega 's intended successor to the Game Gear , though the device was ultimately shelved and never released due to the expensive cost of touchscreen technology in the early 1990s. 1994 FIRST WIRE BASED PROJECTED CAPACITANCE - Stumpe and Beck's touchscreens (1972/1977 - already cited), used opaque conductive copper tracks that obscured about 50% of the screen (80 micron track / 80 micron space). The advent of projected capacitance in 1984, however, with its improved sensing capability, indicated that most of these tracks could be eliminated. This proved to be so, and led to

8415-550: Was Director of TRE at the time of the merger and continued as Director of RRE. William Henry (Bill) Penley, Head of Guided Missiles, took over for a year in 1961. Then George Macfarlane (after postings outside RRE) became Director in 1962. At the time of the name change to Radar Research Establishment in 1953, the senior staff included: Other members of the Physics Division who made significant contributions to several fields of endeavour include: In 1956, R.A. Smith presented

8514-666: Was accompanied by yet another renaming, now becoming the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE). Ultimately they began to worry that this location was also too exposed, and when they heard a German paratroop unit had moved to France directly across the English Channel , they decided to move once again. The ADEE, by this time once again renamed to the Air Defence Research and Development (ADRDE), moved to underutilized Air Ministry buildings on

8613-671: Was demonstrated on the 16-bit Atari 520ST color computer. It featured a color touchscreen widget-driven interface. The ViewTouch POS software was first shown by its developer, Gene Mosher, at the Atari Computer demonstration area of the Fall COMDEX expo in 1986. 1987 CAPACITANCE TOUCH KEYS - Casio launched the Casio PB-1000 pocket computer with a touchscreen consisting of a 4×4 matrix, resulting in 16 touch areas in its small LCD graphic screen. 1988 SELECT ON "LIFT-OFF" - Touchscreens had

8712-498: 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 and then more fully—with photographs and diagrams—in an article published in 1967. MID-60s ULTRASONIC CURTAIN - Another precursor of touchscreens, an ultrasonic-curtain-based pointing device in front of a terminal display, had been developed by

8811-467: Was estimated to need up to 100 man-years, using multi-pass compilers with up to seven passes. The RRE team described how they had already implemented a one-pass compiler , which was already in production for engineering and scientific uses. It was the first working version of ALGOL 68. Senior staff, of the divisions at various times included More than 50 books were written by members of the establishment under its successive names. Details are included in

8910-506: Was expanded into solid state physics , electronics , and computer hardware and software. The RRE's overall scope was extended to include cryogenics and other topics. Infrared detection for guided missiles and heat sensing devices was a major defence application. The SRDE brought satellite communications and fibre optics knowledge. In 1991 they were partially privatized as part of the Defence Research Agency, which became

9009-719: Was formed as a small group within the Air Ministry's research centre in Bawdsey Manor in Suffolk . Forced to leave Bawdsey due to its exposed location on the east coast of England, both groups moved several times before finally settling in separate locations in Malvern beginning in May 1942. The merger in 1953 that formed the RRE renamed these as the North Site (RRDE) and South Site (TRE). The earlier research and development work of TRE and RRDE on radar

9108-404: Was given its new name after a visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Both names were abbreviated to RRE. In 1976 the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE), involved in communications research, joined the RRE to form the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE). The two groups had been closely associated since before the opening of World War II , when the predecessor to RRDE

9207-408: Was influential in development of multi-touch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, though this system had no touch interaction itself. By 1984, both Bell Labs and Carnegie Mellon University had working multi-touch-screen prototypes – both input and graphics – that could respond interactively in response to multiple finger inputs. The Bell Labs system was based on capacitive coupling of fingers, whereas

9306-488: Was introduced by researchers at the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). As users touch the screen, feedback is provided as to what will be selected: users can adjust the position of the finger, and the action takes place only when the finger is lifted off the screen. This allowed the selection of small targets, down to a single pixel on a 640×480 Video Graphics Array (VGA) screen (a standard of that time). 1988 WORLD EXPO - From April to October 1988,

9405-637: Was later resolved by using finer (10 micron diameter), dark coated wires. Throughout the following decade JPM continued to use touchscreens for many other games such as "Cluedo" and "Who wants to be a Millionaire". 1998 PROJECTED CAPACITANCE LICENSES - This technology was licensed four years later to Romag Glass Products - later to become Zytronic Displays, and Visual Planet in 2003 (see page 4). 2004 MOBILE MULTI-TOUCH PROJECTED CAPACITANCE PATENT - Apple patents its multi-touch capacitive touchscreen for mobile devices. 2004 VIDEO GAMES WITH TOUCHSCREENS - Touchscreens were not be popularly used for video games until

9504-589: Was purposely inhibited, presumably as this was not considered useful at the time ("A...variable...called BUT changes value from zero to five when a button is touched. The touching of other buttons would give other non-zero values of BUT but this is protected against by software" (Page 6, section 2.6). "Actual contact between a finger and the capacitor is prevented by a thin sheet of plastic" (Page 3, section 2.3). At that time Projected capacitance had not yet been invented. 1977 RESISTIVE - An American company, Elographics – in partnership with Siemens – began work on developing

9603-473: Was released for the Sega AI Computer . EARLY 80s EVALUATION FOR AIRCRAFT - Touch-sensitive control-display units (CDUs) were evaluated for commercial aircraft flight decks in the early 1980s. Initial research showed that a touch interface would reduce pilot workload as the crew could then select waypoints, functions and actions, rather than be "head down" typing latitudes, longitudes, and waypoint codes on

9702-529: Was that the Boie technology would become available to us in the near future. Around 1990 I took a group from Xerox to see this technology it [sic] since I felt that it would be appropriate for the user interface of our large document processors. This did not work out". UP TO 1984 CAPACITANCE - Although, as cited earlier, Johnson is credited with developing the first finger operated capacitive and resistive touchscreens in 1965, these worked by directly touching wires across

9801-412: Was the first machine to use touch screen technology instead of buttons (see Quiz machine / History). It used a 14 inch version of this newly invented wire based projected capacitance touchscreen and had 64 sensing areas - the wiring pattern being similar to that shown in the lower diagram. The zig-zag pattern was introduced to minimize visual reflections and prevent Moire interference between the wires and

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