1. Evolution of Touch
Screens
1972-2012
BY: Aamer

2. 1972 PLATO IV
•First touchscreen ever built
•Built by the University of Illinois as a
computer-based educations system
•Made particularly for students to be able to
answer questions using a touchscreen
•Priced at $12,000 during its time
•This device was really popular because it was
the first touchscreen ever invented, but many
people couldn’t afford it.

3. 1983 HP-150
•Released in 1983 and was the world’s earliest
commercial touchscreen computer
•This computer featured a touch-sensitive screen
that allowed users to activate a feature by touching
the screen
•Was made for families to enjoy this new
technology at the time
•The HP-150 was the first touchscreen computer
ever made so it became increasingly popular over
the years of 1983-1984

4. 1985 Home Manager
•The company sought to create the world’s first
touchscreen-based home automation system. Unity
Systems’ Home Manager was introduced in 1985 and
was produced by the company until 1999. Service is
still available to the nearly 6,000 systems that remain
in operation today
•Made for families hence the name Home Manager
•The Home Manager was the first Touchscreen based
home automation system . It was introduced in 1985
and was produced until 1999. The price of this device
was $1500 only because it was touchscreen and no
one had ever heard of anything like this.

5. 1989 GRiDPAD
•GRiD was a pioneer in mobile computing, and
many of the technologies in today’s notebooks,
tablets, and handhelds would not exist had it
not been for the GRID
•It measured 9 x 12 x 1.4 inches and weighed
4.5 pounds. Text was entered directly on the
screen with an electronic pen. The procedure
was slow, taking one to two seconds for written
characters to be redisplayed as computer-
generated characters

6. 1992 Simon
•The IBM Simon Personal Communicator was the
world's first smartphone, created by a joint venture
between IBM and BellSouth.
• Simon was first shown as a product concept in 1992
•Was priced at $899 in 1992
•Mainly used for business purposes. The IBM Simon
was the first PDA/Phone combo.
•e major applications were a calendar, address book,
world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, and games. It
had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers
used a touchscreen to select phone numbers with

7. 1996 Pilot
•First generation of PDAs manufactured by Palm Computing in
1996
•The Pilot PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) was mainly targeted
towards business people because it would help them organize
their stuff easily and it was more convenient at the time.
•The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky,
and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing. The original
purpose of this company was to create handwriting recognition
software for other devices
•The price of this device was $369. The company's sales were
$889.3 million in 1997.

8. 2007 iPhone
•The apple IPhone was first introduced on January 9, 2007 nearly 15
years after the IBM Simon was introduced
•This is an all around phone. It could be used for music, organizing
etc.
•It was the first smartphone to bring many, now standard,
technologies to the industry including multi-touch gestures, full Web
browsing, and an accelerometer to flip the screen’s orientation or act
as another form of input
•They also had neat applications that would do different things it was
easy for consumers to download and install these apps that 1 billion
of them were downloaded in the first nine months.
•iPhone Weekend One: 700,000 Sold, $200million+ Profit For Apple
(not including marketing costs), on sales somewhere between
$350million and $420million, significantly more than earlier estimates
of Apple having a $300million weekend.

9. 2007 Surface
•A table computer that uses multi-touch technology to
allow several users, using their fingers (up to 52), to
simultaneously manipulate images and other data right
on the screen
•It can also sense and interact with objects like
cameras, phones, water glasses, and even
paintbrushes that are placed on top of it

10. 2010-2012 iPad
•Apple’s iPad is a gap between laptops and
smartphones
•It had many great features. A machine designed to
handle internet browsing, email, photos, music, videos,
games and eBooks.
•And with an available keyboard dock and plenty of apps
just a touch away, the iPad will also serve a market of
non-technical and new computer users. The iPad may
prove to do for touchscreen tablets what Apple did for
smartphones with the release of the iPhone.
•The iPad was selected by Time Magazine as one of the
50 Best Inventions of the Year 2010. Apple has sold
14.79 million iPads since launching the tablet in
mid-2010

11. Video
• This video will show you how far technology has
advanced in touchscreens since 1972
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TofWQZe6ucU&feature=player_embedde

12. Conclusion
Overall Touchscreens revolutionized the smartphone
industry. What was state-of-the-art technology 20
years ago is now almost standard for all devices. The
ability to operate a device by touch has changed the
way we interact with our devices, but there’s always
room for improvement. So, what comes next?

13. Works Cited
•http://www.indiasemiconductorforum.com/showthread.php?61-The-Evolution-
•http://www.gadzooki.com/cool-stuff/the-mogees-mini-mic-is-the-evolution-of-to