Two Decades Of Computing Touchscreen Evolution

When computers were first created in the 1960s, keyboards were the only way one could input commands.

That changed with the arrival of the mouse in the 1980s and, after that, innovation took over and ensured the two received various updates, both incremental and critical. Touchscreens also came along sometime in the 1980s, but that didn’t really take-off then. Even with re-designs, additional features, and new capabilities, the touchscreen was a niche product in the computing world.

That all changed in mid2000 when touchscreens started appearing on early smartphone incarnations like the HP iPAQ range. Accelerated innovation took hold of touchscreen development right after and drove the concept to new heights during the 2010 smartphone boom.

BEYOND THE SMARTPHONE

As touchscreen use quickly grew in demand, thanks to how smartphones becoming consumer-pervasive, it made sense for tablets, and eventually laptops, to come equipped with multi-point touchscreen functionality. In fact, with how these interactive panels started to literally grow larger, the idea of loading touchscreens onto All-in-One PCs is the logical next step.

Touchscreens made the natural transition from smartphones by first moving to Ultrabooks and, eventually, convertible laptops. These ultra-compact and highly versatile systems already come in 13-inch and 15-inch flavours, so it made sense to ramp up the dimensions to large-format. After all, there are touchscreens that measure up to 80-inches and beyond for interactive boards and smart panels. Since laptops with touchscreens are considerably compact and smart-screens are too big to move around, the All-in-One (AIO) PCs – coming in 24-inch, up to 30-inch sizes – seem to be the most ideal.