A touch screen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence & location of a touch within the

display area. The term generally means touching the display of the device with a finger, hand or other passive devices such as stylus. This technology has two main attributes. First it enables one to interact with what is displayed & secondly it lets one to do so without requiring any intermediate device that would need to be held in the hand. They also play a prominent role in design of digital appliances such as personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones, video games etc. In 1971, the first Touch Sensor was developed by Dr. Sam Hurst (founder of Elographics) of University of Kentucky. From 1983, the HP-150 was one of the worlds earliest commercial touchscreen computers which is based on Intel 8088 microprocessor. It did not have a touchscreen in the strict sense instead it has CRT surrounded by infrared transmitter & receiver, which detects the position of any non transparent object on the screen. There are a variety of touchscreen technologies such as Resistive,Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW), and Capacitive. Different technologies may be used to determine the location of touch by different means. Then location is sent to the controller for processing. As an example, Resistive touchscreen panel is composed of electrically conductive layers separated by narrow gap. When an object presses down on the panels outer surface the conductive layers get connected & complete the circuit. Controller then converts the electrical signal into digital X & Y co-ordinate. The SAW technology uses ultrasonic waves that pass over touch screen panel. The Capacitive touchscreen panel consists of an insulator coated with a transparent conductor (such as Indium Tin Oxide ITO). Touch screen is a developing technology. The development of multipoint touchscreen facilitated the tracking of more fingers than one finger on the screen thus the operations that require more than one finger are possible. These devices also allow multiple users to interact with the touchscreen simultaneously. With the growing field of touchscreen the marginal cost of this technology is decreasing. But there are some drawbacks of this technology. This technology requires careful handling. Touchscreen suffers from the fingerprints on the display. There are other so many issues also. There are tremendous applications of touchscreen technology. Public Information Display, ATMs, Ticket Counters, Digital Gaming, Student Registration System are such examples. Though the touchscreen technology contains some limitations it is still very applicable. It is user friendly, fast accurate, easy to operate. It has been widely accepted & a little modification can replace the concept of mouse & keyboard in near future. References: 1.John Broz, Ted Dimiropoulos, Alex Schallmo, & Mahreen Younus, Touch screen Technologies. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen 3. www.etouchtechnologies.com 4. www.seminarprojects.com