Plato IV Student Terminal, From Stifle, The Plato IV Student Terminal (1974)
Plato IV Student Terminal, From Stifle, The Plato IV Student Terminal (1974)
Detail map of Urbana, Illinois, United States Overview map of Urbana, Illinois, United States

A: Urbana, Illinois, United States

One of the First Touchscreens Appears on the Plato IV System

1972
Plato IV terminal touch screen in use.
Plato IV terminal touch screen in use.

In 1972 one of the first touchscreens in a working computer application was in the terminal of the Plato IV system at the University of Illinois.

"In 1972 a new system named PLATO IV was ready for operation. The PLATO IV terminal was a major innovation. It included Bitzer's orange plasma display invention which incorporated both memory and bitmapped graphics into one display. This plasma display included fast vector line drawing capability and ran at 1260 baud, rendering 60 lines or 180 characters per second. The display was a 512x512 bitmap, with both character and vector plotting done by hardwired logic. Users could provide their own characters to support rudimentary bitmap graphics. Compressed air powered a piston-driven microfiche image selector that permitted colored images to be projected on the back of the screen under program control. The PLATO IV display also included a 16-by-16 grid infrared touch panel allowing students to answer questions by touching anywhere on the screen" (Wikipedia article on Plato (computer system), accessed 12-30-2009).

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