MARWAHKEPRI.COM – Every time we tap the phone screen, swipe through a photo, or zoom in on a map with two fingers, rarely do we think: who actually invented the touch screen? This technology, which is now part of everyday life, has a long journey — starting from scientists’ laboratories, not from big technology companies.
It all started in 1965. A British scientist named EA Johnson was working at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern. He developed a screen that can respond to human touch to help air traffic control systems. Two years later, his findings were published in a scientific journal. From there the forerunner of the capacitive touch screen – the technology that would later become the basis of smartphones – was born.
Several years later, in the early 1970s, a researcher from the United States, Dr. Samuel C. Hurst, discovered a technology called Elograph. Unlike Johnson screens that respond to finger touches, Elograph work under pressure. This discovery became known as a resistive screen – a type of screen that was widely used in ATM machines and industrial devices at that time.
Touchscreens continued to develop, but only really entered many people’s lives after 2007, when Apple introduced the iPhone with a multi-touch screen. For the first time, people could pinch and swipe on the screen with ease — a breakthrough that made the touchscreen a symbol of modernity.
Now, almost everything has a touch screen: cellphones, tablets, cars, even coffee machines in cafes. In fact, in-air touch technology — without having to touch a surface at all — has begun to be developed.
Who would have thought, a small innovation from a radar laboratory in England decades ago has now become an inseparable part of the way humans interact with the digital world. Touch screens are not just tools, they are symbols of the evolution of the way we “touch” technology. MK-mun
Editor: Munawir Sani
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