High-tech innovations are often developed by laboratory researchers long before they're introduced into the commercial market. Multitouch computing was no exception.
According to Bill Buxton, a
multitouch pioneer now at Microsoft Research, the first multitouch screen was developed at Bell Labs in 1984. Buxton reports that the screen, created by Bob Boie, "used a transparent capacitive array of touch sensors overlaid on a CRT." It allowed the user to "manipulate graphical objects with fingers with excellent response time."
In the two decades that followed, researchers experimented with a variety of techniques for building multitouch displays. A 1991 Xerox PARC project called the "Digital Desk" used a projector and camera situated above an ordinary desk to track touches. A multitouch table called the
DiamondTouch also used an overhead projector, but its touch sensor ran a small amount of current through the user's body into a receiver in the user's chair. NYU researcher Jeff Han
developed a rear-projection display that achieved multitouch capabilities through a technique called "frustrated total internal reflection."
