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IECH
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NEWS BITS
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HIBH-RESOLUTION TOUCH SCREEN
NEW FLAT-PANEL DISPLAY TECHNOLOBY
YIELDS COLOR & 3-D
The Technical Monthly
for the Amusements Industry
P.O. Box 1065
Merchantville, NJ 08109
609/662-3432
JUNE 1984
VOLUME 6, NO. 4
Publisher/Editor
James Calore
Administrative Assistant
LT. DiRenzo
Art/ Advertising Coordinator
Paul Ehlinger
Circulation Promotion
Linda Geseking
Layout
Dale Meloni Graphics
Contributing
Technical Writers
Todd Erickson
Mark "Bear'' Attebery
Sam Cross
STAR•TECH JOURNAL, June 1984,
Vol. 6, No. 4. Copyright 1984 by
Star•Tech Journal, Inc. All rights
reserved. Address inquiries to: P.O.
Box 1065, Merchantville, NJ 08109.
Phone: 609/662·3432. Subscrip-
tion rates: USA-$56.00. Canada-
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Please remit payment in US funds.
POSTMASTER: Send address
changes to STAR•TECH JOUR-
NAL P.O. Box 1065, Merchantville,
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(ISSN 0739·1048) is published
monthly by Star•Tech Journal, Inc.,
18 North Centre St., P.O. Box 1065,
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Advertising rates available upon
request. Contents of the articles
herein are verified as much as pos-
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own risk. All manuscripts become
property of Star•Tech Journal. No
part of this Journal may be repro-
duced without permission.
HIGH-RESOLUTION
TOUCH SCREEN
W
hen it comes to connecting com-
puter gear - interfacing - there's
no problem: serial, parallel, IEEE, and a slew
of other hardware standards and software
protocols have them communicating better
than politicians at a fund-raiser. But when it's
time to work with humans, the silicon smarties
understandably fall short. The result is a rela-
tively quiet but growing area of "human-
i11terface" techniques that promises to be as
important as the computer itself.
The latest attempt, shown above, isa high-
resolution, high-speed touch screen monitor
from MicroTouch Systems(400 W. Cummings
Park, Woburn, MA 01801 ). It's designed to
replace the standard display on the IBM PC.
Like other touch screens, you merely point to
a specific spot to give a command. The differ-
ence, however, is that the Micro Touch screen
has a 1,024-by-1,024-point resolution and
samples 100 touch areas every second. That
allows you to literally draw with your finger, for
example, or pick out detailed sections of word
processing text (not just whole paragraphs).
It sounds good, but touch-screen technol-
ogy does have some pitfalls. Despite higher-
resolution-reaching icon levels, actual work is
still limited to the size of your fingers. (Logically,
using a more precise pointing device defeats
the whole purpose; i.e., direct interface
between user and computer.) And there may
be a few practical problems as well: scratches
and smudges on the screen surface from all-
day poking.
Have they found the perfect human inter-
face? Not yet, but they're getting closer.
NEW FLAT-PANEL DISPLAY
TECHNOLOGY YIELDS
COLOR & 3-D
B
inary Star, Inc., Bellevue, WA, has
disclosed details of their new flat
panel display. It is less than a half inch thick
and capable of producing high-resolution
color and 3-D at prices competitive with CRTs.
The display consists of single or multiple
transparent substrates, containing color filters
and incandescent light elements that are
sandwiched between glass faceplates. The
tungsten light elements are smaller than
grains of sand, have little thermal inertia, and
develop little heat. Each element requires
about 0.1 mW at 5v and brightness is over 20
times that of a conventional CRT. There can
be over a million elements on a panel.
Multi-level color displays which provide
true three-dimensional images have already
been constructed by Binary Star for military
use. The company also claims to have
developed low cost drive electronics.