1. For the last generation, Silicon Valley and Tokyo have been working to design computers that are ever easier to use. There is one thing, however, that has prevented the machines from becoming their user-friendliest: you still have to input data with a keyboard, and that can require you to do a lot of typing and to memorize a lot of elaborate commands.
2. Enter the clipboard computer, a technology that has been in development for the last 20 years but took hold in the mass market only in 1993. Clipboard PCs – which, as their name suggests, are not much bigger that an actual clipboard – replace the keyboard with a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen and an electronic stylus. Users input data by printing individual letters directly on the screen. There are two technologies at work in a clipboard PC: one allows raw data to get into the computer to figure out what data means. The first technology relies principally on hardware and varies depending on the particular computer. In one system, marketed under the name GRIDPad, the computer’s LCD screen is covered with a transparent conductive coating. Voltage is sent across the glass in horizontal and vertical lines forming a fine grid, the voltage is slightly different. When the stylus – which is essentially a voltmeter- touches the screen, it informs the computer of the voltage at that point. The computer uses this information to determine where the stylus is and causes a liquid crystal pixel to appear at those coordinates. The position of the stylus is monitored several hundred times a second, so as the stylus moves across the glass, whole strings of pixels are activated.
Вроде так (-)_(-)
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• Первая русская паровая машина была изобретена братьями Черепановыми.
• В 1836 году Сэмюэл Кольт сконструировал и запатентовал первый пистолет с вращающимся стволом, который мог выпускать 6 пуль одну за другой.
• Модельный ряд Hoftrac 1100 отличается компактной конструкцией и малым радиусом поворота.
• Первые трамваи были запряжены лошадьми, а позже все трамваи приводились в движение электричеством.