In , researchers created a frosted glass panel in which a camera was placed behind the glass. This glass panel supported input from multiple simultaneous touches; thus, it was considered multi-touch. Basically, users could press their fingers against the glass, and the camera on the opposite side would detect the location of these touches.
Fast forward just one year later and Bell Labs published a report on touchscreen technology. Today, multi-touch technology is a common staple found in many touchscreen devices.
Multi-touch technology works in the same manner as a traditional touchscreen device, only it supports input from multiple simultaneous touches. As he often did, Jobs saw the future before anyone else did, and seized the moment. In , the first iPhone debuted, and it rocked the world with its huge touchscreen, sexy steel-and-glass design, and all-in-one features it also incorporated the ability to listen to music, watch videos, etc.
It was the first smartphone to use a multi-touch display, bringing loads of innovations along with it that still influence handheld devices of all kinds. When the App Store arrived a year later, it marked the first time that apps could be purchased from and installed directly onto a handheld device without the need to sync with a computer. Android devices hit the market about a year after the iPhone, and instantly the two smartphones became the leading contenders for the smartphone throne — and bitter rivals.
It inspired fan devotion on levels that Apple had long desired but never been able to achieve. Put simply, the iPhone was the first consumer gadget outside of a video game console to cause wrap-around-the-block lines of customers to wait hours or even days on end because they were so eager to get their hands on it. Samuel Hurst, inventor of the touchscreen. Who was first : Touch-sensitive screens have become a fairly common part of our everyday lives.
Apple certainly deserves its share of the credit for leveraging them as a feasible user interface, but would you believe the first touchscreen was created all the way back in An inventor named G. Samuel Hurst created the first touchscreen and published his work in It was never manufactured for consumers. The first touchscreen consumer device worth mentioning was the Nintendo DS game console in John Elias and Wayne Westerman, founders of Fingerworks.
What Apple did: One of the great modern pioneers of multitouch technologies was a company named Fingerworks, founded in The first product to come out of this innovation was the original iPhone. By the way… Seven years after that acquisition, the two men who founded Fingerworks are still senior engineers at Apple.
This new class of product ran a specialized version of Windows XP, sometimes converted between a laptop and a tablet with a swiveling screen, and always came with a stylus. The Windows devices were focused mainly on content creation, where the iPad is largely dedicated to content consumption. Apple ditched the stylus, doggedly in favor of finger input though styluses can be purchased from third-party vendors.
In the end, using an iPad literally felt like playing with technology from the future. But that was only the beginning. In the last year or so, the public has embraced the iPads as a real productivity device, implementing them in offices, hospitals, schools, and much more. Unathletic, uncoordinated tall man with endless creativity stampeding through his overactive brain. Comes with beard, wife, and two miniature humans. But Apple was the first to produce good products, and to make a commercial success.
And just as Apple took one innovation and improved on it so did Samsung. Inventing is over rated and up there with Elephant hunting and victorian area. What matter is can you make a product people want and understand and Apple is good at that. Considering the guy who invented the Color TV died broke.
Or Tesla which we tend to read and know as well as some of the incredible things he invented was basically destetute by the time he died.
Inventing is fine if you can make money from it, but useless if its just to have a patent no one cares about. It appears that you equate importance to the wealth it generates. How do you feel about Bill Gates? How would you feel about the guy who creates a cure for the common cold?
Apple is proof that being the first to employ a new technology is not as important to success as being the first to do it right. Apple controls the whole widget which means that its products integrate numerous cutting edge technologies so that the whole is greater that the sum of its parts. Apple sells a complete user experience and not just not collection of specs and bullet points.
Excellent point. Invention and implementation are two very different things, and Apple does the latter better than anyone. Having said that, it all remains to be seen how this trend progresses in this post-Jobs era. No way, the only way apple even sells their product is good marketing it only sells because its popular not because it is good.
Keep up the good work. There were lots of others. Lighter than air craft. Many attempts were made. Innovations are dreamed of first by a whole culture. At some point, it was adopted by British air traffic controllers and was used into the s. Another design came in the s, with the resistive touchscreen. American inventor, scientist, health physicist, and educator Dr. Samuel Hurst discovered this design while studying atomic physics with a Van de Graaff generator, a machine that accumulates and releases electric charge.
He and two colleagues used electrically conductive paper to read the coordinates of their analysis, completing their experiments in a few hours when it could have taken days. The University of Kentucky — that Hurst had been working at — tried to patent the idea on his behalf, but he had other ideas.
When returned to work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he dedicated time after-hours to work on his almost accidental invention. Hurst and nine others worked to perfect the design, calling their group "Elographics" while applying it to controlling computers. This design uses a number of thin resistive layers with thin gaps between. When a finger presses down on the screen, they're pushed together, creating voltage that a computer can read as a location. Because it uses pressure, it can be pressed with either a finger or stylus.
In addition, the design is cheaper than a capacitive screen. Tech companies were starting to take notice of this new way to control computers. Hewlett-Packard was the first to release a product that put touchscreens in the hands of everyday users. HP made a name for itself in the s and 70s for creating smaller and smaller computers to the point where it had made one of the first machines to be called a "personal computer", the A.
The included device used a new system for touch input, featuring a grid of infrared emitters and detectors in the monitor's bezel. When the infrared beams were interrupted, the HP could locate where the user was touching the screen.
However, the system had its faults: dust would get into the infrared holes and require vacuuming. The design wasn't ergonomic either, users would complain of muscle fatigue, or "Gorilla Arm" from keeping their arm outstretched and unsupported for long periods of time. This first foray into a consumer touchscreen device wasn't incredibly popular.
Meanwhile, other touch technologies were being developed. Myron Krueger, an American computer artist developed the Video Place, a screen that could track a user's silhouette and movements. Multi-touch was also proven in at the University of Toronto by Nimish Mehta. This design also used a camera to identify where the user was touching the screen. The first multi-touch overlay was developed in by Bob Boie of Bell Labs, creating a true capacitive screen that could detect multiple points of contact.
As computers continued to shrink, tech companies started seeing the possibilities of handheld devices.
These used a touchscreen that was made for a stylus, and boasted a much anticipated feature: handwriting recognition. However, the high price point and problems interpreting user writing kept it from being successful. Today, it's recognized as the first true smartphone with a calendar, address book, and notepad. Touch panels are becoming more common in our daily lives, in cellphones, ATMs, kiosks, ticket vending machines, etc to enable user interaction.
Each device uses a different technology to meet the demand. Projected capacitance technology is a sensitive sensor that can sense through a 6mm-thick glass insulator , coated with a conductor like indium-tin-oxide. When the user touches the surface of the screen, electricity is conducted through the finger causing a measurable change in capacitance. It is mainly used in control panels, digital signage, industrial automation, gaming machines and so on.
Touchscreens manufactured with this technology give excellent resistance to surface contaminants and liquids, a long life span with more simultaneous touch points, use less power, and are more reliable and durable.
However, this technology requires initial tuning of devices, so it is expensive, and we can use only conductive elements gloves cannot be used. These are extremely strong, highly reactive and immune to ambient light. But this technology is limited to object recognition—similar to projected capacitance, where gloves cannot be used.
These touchscreens are not available in large formats. Resistive touch technology is mainly used in aviation, military, broadcast and education devices. Two conductive layers are separated by spacers. When the user touches one conductive layer, pressure creates contact between the two layers, causing current to flow.
So, usage of gloves by the user does not affect the flow of current. This technology is easy to manufacture and costs low if size of the screen is normal, but increases exponentially for large sizes. Touchscreens made using this technology are more stable, resistant to screen contaminants and immune to ambient light. But these have poor object recognition, poor clarity and poor multi-touch capability. Acoustic surfaces are mainly used in point-of-information kiosks, hospitality, ticket sales transportation , multimedia payphones, gaming, lotteries and amusement.
Sides of the monitor have a series of piezoelectric transducers and receivers that create an invisible grid of ultrasonic waves on the surface. When a user touches the panel, the finger absorbs part of the wave that is produced, which allows the receiving transducer to locate the touchpoint s. Acoustic surface touch panels address the limitation of poor clarity in projected capacitance and resistive touch. These also ensure better durability, high stability, longer life span and scratch-resistance.
The remarkable feature of this technology is that the screen is tested at over fifty million touches. It is not recommended to use acoustic products in open environments. Also, the screen cannot be completely sealed, is immune to low weather and surface contaminants cause dead spots on the screen.
Optical systems are cost-effective and the easiest to create.
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