10 World-Changing Inventions from Government Funding

March 7, 2013

Touch Screens

The easy-to-use touch screen on your iPhone or iPad might not have been possible without funding from the NSF and the CIA to researchers at the University of Delaware in 1996. The researchers developed a sophisticated finger tracking and gesture recognition system and introduced the first touch-screen tablet called the iGesture Numpad in 2001. Apple purchased the technology in 2005 and tweaked it to develop the iPhone screen.

<p>The easy-to-use touch screen on your iPhone or iPad might not have been possible without funding from the NSF and the CIA to researchers at the University of Delaware in 1996. The researchers developed a sophisticated finger tracking and gesture reco

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REUTERS/Vivek Prakash

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