Multi-touch


 * Multi-Touch** is a way to allow people to manipulate graphic material with several fingers. Basically, multi-touch is a touch screen that can be applied to any computer screen or displays. Unlike regular touch screens where you can only use one finger to use the display, with multi-touch the screen will recognize more than one point on the screen. Good examples of the multi-touch screens are the apple iPhone, iPod touch, and like we read in last weeks tech Thursday article the Microsoft Surface. The multi-touch is achieved by a variety of means like heat, finger pressure, ultrasonic receivers, transducer microphones. Multi-touch right now is being used by museums, big corporations, and the military because you can work on more than one thing at one time. Multi-touch is everywhere you just do not realize it. It is in movies you watch, TV showes like CSI and other shows. This advance in technology is already incorperated in things we use. Some examples that use multi-touch are Windows 7, NUI Group, Dell Latitude XT, and all the other examples I listed above. [|[1]]

The main purpose of multi-touch is to manipulate graph displays. To help you better understand how multi-touch works watch this video.[|[2]]

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The multi-touch responds to finger movements by seeing the fingers with the infrared cameras receiving the reflected light back from your fingers.[|[3]]

__**The iPhone**__
The iPhone is comprised of 5-6 layers. All of these layers help maintain the multi-touch system. The base layer of the iPhone is the display layer. This is also call and LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) monitor. This gives you the picture you see on the screen of the iPhone. The next two layers are comprised of glass and some rows of electronic devices called sensing lines and driving lines. The sensing lines are set vertical on the glass and the driving lines are set horizontal on the upper sheet of glass. When put together these lines form a grid. The iPhone's capacitors, the sensing and driving lines, can detect change from point to point on these lines. So basically what I am say is that every point on these lines generates their very own signal when touched by a finger, which is then sent to the processor to be processed. If you have ever tried to use any thing other than a finger on an iPhone you will notice that it doesn't work. This is because there is much reliance on this capacitive material that is in the inside of the iPhone. The next 3 layers are just a bonding layer and 2 protective layers of material. The other way the multi-touch screen will work is by placing tiny electrodes under the last 3 layers of material. The electrodes help transmit signals about where your finger is. Click [|here] to view pictures of the iPhone's inner works.

__Microsoft Products__
Here is a video from youtube that shows Windows 7 a new multi-touch compatible system for your computer.media type="youtube" key="iTABGen4Ckg" height="344" width="425"[|[4]]
 * Windows 7**

Microsoft Surface
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I hope this information helps you better understand the multi-touch system.

Here are some images showing the multi-touch.