The History of Touchscreens
2022-02-23 10:36
Touch screens have attracted people's attention since their birth. In 1982, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, exhibited 33 TVs using new transparent touch-sensitive control panels in the American Pavilion at the World Trade Fair for the first time. For many people, this was the first time to watch and use a touch screen.
In 1991, touch screens entered my country, and at that time they were only agents for foreign infrared and capacitive touch screen products. In 1993, my country's infrared touch screen technology was basically mature. During this period, the prototype of touch self-service kiosk was gradually produced. Although touch screen technology has only been used in my country for more than 20 years, it has become a computer input method that is easily accepted by ordinary people after keyboard, mouse, handwriting board, and voice input. Because with this technology, users can operate the host by simply touching the icons or text on the computer display with their fingers, making human-computer interaction more straightforward. This technology greatly facilitates users and is very suitable for multimedia information query. At the same time, this human-computer interaction method gives multimedia a new look and is a very attractive new multimedia interactive device. In 1999, my country's first self-developed touch self-service integrated machine was born.
The launch of the iPhone in 2007 became a milestone in the development of the touch screen industry. Apple designed a mobile phone that required at least 20 buttons to only require three or four buttons, and the remaining operations were all completed by the touch screen. In addition to giving users a more direct and convenient operating experience, it also makes the appearance of the mobile phone more fashionable and thin, increasing the intimacy of direct human-computer interaction, triggering consumers' enthusiastic pursuit, and also opening the touch screen to the mainstream control interface.
With the development of computer technology and network technology, touch screens are now widely used in sales point POS self-service machines, information query equipment, entertainment equipment, computer-based training and simulation, medical equipment, mobile and handheld systems, industrial control equipment, office automation equipment, information appliances and other fields, and it has penetrated into all aspects of people's lives. At present, the application scope of touch screen has become more and more extensive, from industrial equipment control, operating system, electronic inquiry facilities for public information inquiry, commercial cash machines, to consumer electronic mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras, etc. Touch screens can be seen. Of course, mobile phones are still the most widely used. According to the report of research organization ABIResearch, the shipment volume of mobile phones with touch screens will exceed 100 million in 2008, and it is expected that the shipment volume of mobile phones with touch screens will exceed 500 million in 2012.
There are signs that the application scope of touch screens in consumer electronic products is expanding from small-sized fields such as mobile phone screens to notebook computers with larger screen sizes. At present, first-tier notebook computer brand manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Fujitsu, and Asus are planning to launch notebook computers or UMPCs with touch screens. Of course, there is still debate in the industry as to whether notebook computers equipped with touch screens can expand from low-priced notebook computers or UMPCs below 10in to the mainstream notebook computer market above 14in. Because for mainstream laptops or desktops, consumers are accustomed to using keyboards and mice for input, unlike small-sized laptops, which can accommodate a limited number of keyboards and need to be assisted by touch screens to achieve more intuitive human-computer communication.
Currently, touch computers are mainly all-in-one desktop computers, and the industry has also launched a few multi-touch laptops to test market response. Since the Windows 7 operating system directly supports multi-touch applications, compared to general touch computers that only support single-finger operation on the screen, multi-touch computers can use two fingers to flip photos, doodle, write, adjust windows, etc.