Origins of Microsoft Surface
While computers have become part of life today, many researchers continue to bring out new technologies and new products to make our life simpler. Microsoft Surface, one such product with unbelievable features. Before we go into the origins of Microsoft Surface, let us see how the technology evolved. Keyboards were used even in the earliest computers. Then came Mouse. And touch pad replaced mouse in laptops. We saw tablet PCs, touch screens and then finally Microsoft Surface.
The first “touch sensor" was developed in 1971 by Dr. Sam Hurst, an instructor at University of Kentucky. This sensor was patented by The University of Kentucky Research Foundation and the sensor was called ‘Elograph’. This was not a transparent touch screen. Dr. Sam Hurst founded his company ‘Elographics’ and developed a transparent touch screen in 1974 and five wire resistive technology in 1977, which is the most popular touch screen technology. This technology was patented by Elographics. This enabled the concept of touch screen computers, which became part of Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) of many banks, where the user need not use a key board or mouse, but simply touch various options to draw cash or transact. While this is not linked to the origins of Microsoft Surface, touch screen technology certainly would have generated some interest in researchers to offer much more than following a menu on screen.
New technology, ‘Multi-touch’ based on human-computer interaction technique was introduced in 1982. University of Toronto did pioneering work in bringing out multi-touch tablets and Bell Labs created multi-touch screens. All these recognize multiple simultaneous touch points and the corresponding software ware designed to interpret simultaneous touches. This technology can be linked directly to the origins of Microsoft Surface, which is becoming a reality now.
Bill Buxton, a Microsoft researcher, developed a multi-touch tablet with the help of Research Group at the University of Toronto in 1985. The multi-touch tablet was capable of sensing number of simultaneous touch inputs and was able to report location and degree of touch for each touch point. Buxton’s paper –‘A Multi-Touch Three Dimensional Touch-Sensitive Tablet’ explains multi-touch systems in detail. In 1995, Bill Buxton seems to have developed a multi-handed interactive tabletop surface. This could have been the origins of Microsoft Surface. But the official release of Microsoft does not say so. There is some confusion regarding this.
It is reported that origins of Microsoft Surface stemmed from the concepts of Steven Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research in 2001. They formed a team and presented the product idea to Bill Gates in 2003. The project team expanded, which produced the prototype T1 (Project code named Milan) based on an IKEA table. The team had to build specific applications like photo browsers, puzzles etc for the proto type testing.
Probably as a prelude to Microsoft Surface, Andrew D. Wilson of Microsoft Research developed a ‘TouchLight’, an imaging touch screen which could display 3D images of gesture-based interaction in 2005. This TouchLight could record as well as project 3D images simultaneously. The team of Project Milan developed as many as 85 prototypes for Microsoft Surface and the hardware design was frozen in 2005. Finally, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft unveiled the Microsoft Surface on May 29, 2007. And we all await the price to be made affordable from its current price tag of US$ 5000 to US$ 10000.
