The Invention of the Touchscreen
- E.A. Johnson, a British inventor, first described his ideas for a capacitive touchscreen in an article in 1965. In 1967, he published another paper on the topic, this time explaining how the technology worked through diagrams and photographs of a prototype. Johnson worked at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern, England, and was interested in developing touchscreen for air traffic control. In 1968, he published a study describing the potential of the technology in air traffic control.
- Around 1972, touch-screen technology emerged again as part of the PLATO project, which was concerned with computer-assisted learning. The project started at the University of Illinois, providing both high school and university students with coursework materials. Donald Bitzer is the inventor behind the PLATO project and its use of the gas plasma display screen in the terminal monitors. Bitzer is an electrical engineer who is probably more widely known for the development of gas plasma screens used in televisions.
- In the 1970s, Sam Hurst, a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was also working on a touch-screen technology idea. His invention was inspired by a need to find a faster method of inputting spectometry readings to a computer rather than waiting for students to do it by hand. His device consisted of two pieces of conductive paper separated by a layer of insulation. He founded Elographics, which became Elo TouchSystems, to market his concept. The original needle-and-paper technology was replaced with finger and screen. Hurst's invention is still in production and is used in the Nintendo DS game consoles.
- The launch of Apple's iPhone created a surge in hand-held touch-screen device use. In 2010, Andrew Hsu won an Outstanding Contribution award at the Mobile Entertainment Awards for inventing the touch-screen technology for cellphones. He filed his patent for a capacitive touchscreen in 1999, but it took seven years to convince the phone industry to adopt it. LG ran a trial of the touchscreen on its Prada phone in 2006, ahead of the iPhone. Hsu works for Synaptics in California, a major supplier of touchscreens to cellphone manufacturers.