Touchscreens or a touchscreen is described as a screen that uses pressure to detect the location and presence of a touch within the area of display. Many objects can be used in order to activate the ‘touch’ the most common being a finger or hand. Other objects such as a stylus or light pen are becoming more popular in their marketplace.
Back in the day most touchscreens were limited by only being able to detect one point of contact at a time & very few could tell the degree of pressure applied to the touch. This started to change when touch screens started to gain momentum in the commercial marketplace.
Two main attributes govern a touch screen monitor, the first is interaction - being able to touch information directly displayed on the screen at the actual point it is shown as opposed to using an indirect object such as a mouse. The second is functionality and accessibility as the only object that’s needed to access the touch screen information is a part of your body, usually a hand or finger.
Touchscreens came from research labs in the early 70’s mainly used for computer assisted learning terminals. More recently we see touchscreens most commonly used in systems that contain kiosks in iundustries such as gaming and retail on point of sale systems (POS), Cash machines, PDA’s and gaming consoles. Touchscreens are also used frequently in industry such as supply lines in factories & touch screen displays used in shopping centres.
