From Physics to Daily Life

5The ‘Touch Screen’ Revolution

Bent Stumpe

It is probably not known that the first capacitive transparent touch screen was developed at CERN as early as 1973 and used at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator. The technical developments carried out at CERN and elsewhere, which have had a major impact on modern communication devices, are described in the following chapter.

Capacitive Touch Screens have provoked a big change in daily life. If the computer is an iPad or a similar device, the interaction process is performed directly on the touch screen. Therefore, you will most probably use a touch screen when you call someone using a smart phone, or very often when you make a payment in the supermarket or you use the Global Positioning System (GPS) in your car. Today, train stations, airports, safety systems, medical apparatus and so on are all using touch screens. Likewise, many products currently use touch screen technologies, and the numbers of these will continue to increase in the near future. In fact, the touch screen market forecasts a threefold increase by 2022.¹⁾

5.1 The Birth of a Touch Screen

A touch screen is an electronic device that is able to detect the direct presence of an object, for example touching a touch-sensitive screen of a computer or microcomputer with a finger. It can be either transparent or nontransparent, and can have many different shapes, many types of mechanical supports, as well as a number of different electronic circuits associated ...