Evolution of Touch Screens

1972-2012

BY: Aamer

1972 PLATO IV

•First touchscreen ever built

•Built by the University of Illinois as a computer-based educations system

•Made particularily for students to be able to answer questions using a touchscreen

•Priced at $12,000 during its time

1983 HP-150

•Released in 1983 and was the world’s earliest commercial touchscreen computer

•This computer featured a touch-sensitive screen that allowed users to activate a feature by touching the screen

•Was made for families to enjoy this new technology at the time

1985 Home Manager

•The company sought to create the world’s first touchscreen-based home automation system. Unity Systems’ Home Manager was introduced in 1985 and was produced by the company until 1999. Service is still available to the nearly 6,000 systems that remain in operation today

•Made for families hence the name Home Manager

1989 GRiDPAD

•GRiD was a pioneer in mobile computing, and many of the technologies in today’s notebooks, tablets, and handhelds would not exist had it not been for the GRID

•It measured 9 x 12 x 1.4 inches and weighed 4.5 pounds. Text was entered directly on the screen with an electronic pen. The procedure was slow, taking one to two seconds for written characters to be redisplayed as computer-generated characters

1992 Simon

•The IBM Simon Personal Communicator was the world's first smartphone, created by a joint venture between IBM and BellSouth.

• Simon was first shown as a product concept in 1992

•Was priced at $899 in 1992

•Mainly used for business purposes. The IBM Simon was the first PDA/Phone combo.

•e major applications were a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to select phone numbers with

1996 Pilot

•First generation of PDAs manafactured by Palm Computing in 1996

•The Pilot PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) was mainly targeted towards business people because it would help them organize their stuff easily and it was more convenient at the time.

•The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing. The original purpose of this company was to create handwriting recognition software for other devices

2007 iPhone

•The apple Iphone was first introduced on January 9, 2007 nearly 15 years after the IBM Simon was introduced

•This is an all around phone. It could be used for music, organizing etc.

•It was the first smartphone to bring many, now standard, technologies to the industry including multi-touch gestures, full Web browsing, and an accelerometer to flip the screen’s orientation or act as another form of input

•They also had neat applications that would do different things it was easy for consumers to download and install these apps that 1 billion of them were downloaded int he first nine months.

2007 Surface

•A  table computer that uses multi-touch technology to allow several users, using their fingers (up to 52), to simultaneously manipulate images and other data right on the screen

•It can also sense and interact with objects like cameras, phones, water glasses, and even paintbrushes that are placed on top of it

2010-2012 iPad

•Apple’s iPad is a gap between laptops and smartphones

•It had many great features. A machine dsigned to handle internet browsing, email, photos, music, videos, games and eBooks.

•And with an available keyboard dock and plenty of apps just a touch away, the iPad will also serve a  market of non-technical and new computer users. The iPad may prove to do for touchscreen tablets what Apple did for smartphones with the release of the iPhone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TofWQZe6ucU&feature=player_embedded

This video will show you how far technology has advanced in touchscreens since 1972

Overall Touchscreens revolutionized the smartphone industry. What was state-of-the-art technology 20 years ago is now almost standard for all devices. The ability to operate a device by touch has changed the way we interact with our devices, but there’s always room for improvement. So, what comes next?

Conclusion

Works Cites

•http://www.indiasemiconductorforum.com/showthread.php?61-The-Evolution-of-Touchscreens-in-Portable-Consumer-Electronics

•http://www.gadzooki.com/cool-stuff/the-mogees-mini-mic-is-the-evolution-of-touch-screen/