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American Gigolo

American Gigolo is a 1980 American neo-noir crime drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader, and starring Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton. It tells the story of a high-priced escort in Los Angeles (Gere) who becomes romantically involved with a prominent politician's wife (Hutton), while simultaneously becoming the prime suspect in a murder case.

The film established Gere as a leading man, and was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to include frontal male nudity from its main star. It is also notable for its Golden Globe Award-nominated musical score, composed by Giorgio Moroder, and number-one single "Call Me" by Blondie. Schrader considers it one of four similar films, which he calls "double bookends": Taxi Driver, bookended by Light Sleeper, and American Gigolo bookended by The Walker.

Plot
Julian Kay is a male escort in Los Angeles whose clientele are upper-class women. His job supports and requires an expensive taste in cars and clothes, and affords him a luxury Westwood apartment. He is blatantly materialistic, as he strives to merit inclusion into the class of people who make up his clientele. He takes pleasure in his work from being able to sexually satisfy women, offering and selling his body to women.

Julian's procurer, Anne, sends him on an assignment with a wealthy old widow, Mrs. Dobrun, who is visiting town. Afterwards, he goes to the hotel bar and meets Michelle Stratton, a California state senator's wife, who becomes obsessed with him. Julian's pimp Leon sends him to Palm Springs on a "substitute" assignment to the house of Mr. Rheiman, a wealthy financier. Rheiman asks Julian to have sado-masochistic sex with his wife Judy while he is watching them. The next day, Julian berates Leon for sending him to a "rough trick" and makes it clear he declines kinky or gay assignments. Leon warns Julian that the wealthy, older women he serves will turn on him and discard him without a second thought.

As Julian begins to have a relationship with Michelle, he learns that Judy Rheiman has been murdered. Los Angeles Police Department Detective Sunday identifies Julian as the prime suspect. Though Julian was with Lisa Williams, another client, on the night of the murder, she protects her marriage by not providing an alibi for Julian.

Julian discovers evidence about the murder. He realizes that he is being framed and grows increasingly desperate. His clothes become rumpled, he goes unshaven and drives a cheap rental car (after painstakingly searching his Mercedes and finding Judy's jewelry that was planted in it to frame him). He neglects to pick up an important client for Anne that he had been scheduled to escort, angering Anne and causing her to shun him. Julian warns Michelle that he is in trouble and, hoping to protect her, he tells her to leave him alone.

Julian concludes that Leon and Rheiman are the ones trying to frame him, and that one of Leon's other gigolos was the murderer. Julian goes to confront Leon, telling him the truth and trying to clear his name. Leon refuses to help him and remains implacable. In a fit of rage, Julian pushes Leon from the apartment balcony; although Julian immediately regrets his action and tries to save him, Leon nevertheless falls to his death. With no one to help him, Julian ends up in jail, helplessly awaiting trial for Judy's murder. Michelle reconciles with Julian by telling the police that she was with Julian the night of Judy's murder, sacrificing her reputation and marriage to save him.

Production
Paul Schrader first conceived of the idea for the film while teaching screenwriting at UCLA's film and television department. The script was one of five screenplays Schrader wrote in 1976. Schrader commented, "The character in Taxi Driver was compulsively nonsexual. The character in American Gigolo is compulsively sexual. He is a man who receives his identity by giving sexual pleasure but has no concept of receiving sexual pleasure."

John Travolta was originally attached to the lead role, with his casting announced by the Los Angeles Times in January 1978. Travolta was provided a wardrobe by Giorgio Armani and appeared in a photo spread for the trade publication Variety announcing his participation. The following year, Travolta dropped out of the production to deal with his mother's death and father's illness.

In Travolta's absence, Barry Diller of Paramount Pictures offered the part of Julian Kay to Christopher Reeve, but Reeve turned down the million-dollar offer. Chevy Chase was also offered the role but declined. Schrader offered the part to his first choice, Richard Gere, who accepted. Gere was cast two weeks before shooting began. In 2012, Gere said he was drawn to the role partly because of its gay subtext, commenting,

"I read it and I thought, 'This is a character I don't know very well. I don't own a suit. He speaks languages; I don't speak any languages. There's kind of a gay thing that's flirting through it and I didn't know the gay community at all.' I wanted to immerse myself in all of that and I had literally two weeks. So I just dove in."

This is not the only role Travolta turned down only to be taken by Gere: it had happened with Days of Heaven (1978) and occurred again when Travolta was offered the lead in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Chicago (2002). Gere's brief nude scenes marked the first time a major Hollywood actor was frontally nude in a film. According to Gere, the nudity was not in the original script.

"It was just in the natural process of making the movie. I certainly felt vulnerable, but I think it's different for men than women."

Julie Christie was originally cast in the role of Michelle Stratton but her departure was precipitated by Gere's replacement of Travolta. By the time Gere was cast, Lauren Hutton had already been hired. Meryl Streep was also offered the part of Michelle but declined because she did not like the tone of the film. Glenn Close also auditioned for a role when Travolta was still attached.

Schrader called Pickpocket (1959) by the French director Robert Bresson an influence on the film; the composition of the final shot pays homage to that film, as does the final dialogue. Schrader later provided an introduction to the Criterion Collection DVD of Pickpocket. On the film's ending, Schrader writes: "At the end of American Gigolo, I wanted to perversely plunge my lizardy protagonist into icy Bressonian waters, so I lifted the ending of Pickpocket and gave it to Julian Kay. A grace note as unwarranted as Christ's promise to the thief on the cross". Schrader re-visited many of the themes of American Gigolo in his 2007 film The Walker and says the idea for that film came about while wondering what would have become of the Julian Kay character.

The film is widely credited to have established the Giorgio Armani brand in Hollywood because the Italian designer's clothes are featured prominently in Julian Kay's wardrobe. When Gere replaced Travolta as Julian, the designer's team had to make new clothing for him as Travolta is 6 ft tall, a few inches taller than Gere.

Filming began on February 13, 1979, and lasted until April 1979.

Soundtrack
The film's musical score was composed by Giorgio Moroder, who was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. The main theme song of the film is "Call Me" performed by Blondie. The song was written by Moroder and Blondie vocalist Debbie Harry, and became a huge worldwide success in 1980. It peaked at number one in several countries including the US and the UK, and became the highest-selling single of 1980 in the United States. In 1981, the song was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Moroder and Harry further shared a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

Reception
Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, writing, "The whole movie has a winning sadness about it; take away the story's sensational aspects and what you have is a study in loneliness." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also awarded 3.5 stars out of 4 and called it "an honest, compelling drama that sheds a little light in some beguilingly dark places." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote in a negative review that writer-director Schrader "is awfully good at establishing inarticulate, unknowing, self-deluding characters, but he's much less effective when it comes to shepherding these characters through the contingencies of the melodrama that is supposed to ennoble them or, at least, to reveal their unsuspected moral resources." Variety faulted the film for an "evasiveness at its core", finding a "moral and emotional ambivalence" in Gere's character "which makes caring about his predicament and ultimate fate difficult." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times was also negative, calling the film "such an improbable tissue of fantasies and dime-novel borrowings that from moment to moment it seems to be making fun of itself, although the joke is disguised perfectly." Roger Angell of The New Yorker wrote that the film "presents a humorless, Penthouse kind of sex, all dolled up with expensive 'real' settings, foreign cars, hi-fi sets, and designer clothes, but barely alive at its glum, soft core."

Television series
In October 2014, Jerry Bruckheimer announced plans to adapt the film into a television series. In October 2016, it was announced that Neil Labute will write the series for Showtime. On June 15, 2021, Showtime gave production series order consists of ten episodes. David Hollander will be writing, directing, and showrunning the series. He is also expected to executive produce alongside Jerry Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman, and KristieAnne Reed. Jon Bernthal, Rosie O’Donnell, Lizzie Brocheré, and Leland Orser were cast in starring roles while Wayne Brady was cast to guest star.

title: American Gigolo


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FBE

FBE may refer to:
 * European Banking Federation
 * First Bulgarian Empire
 * Francisco Beltrão Airport, in Brazil
 * Full blood exam
 * Full Blown Entertainment, a music production company
 * Fusion bonded epoxy coating
 * UNSW Faculty of Built Environment, of the University of New South Wales
 * Fine Brothers Entertainment
 * Fleet Base East, a Royal Australian Navy major fleet base clustered around Sydney Harbour

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: FBE


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Nicolae Cajal

Nicolae Cajal (October 1, 1919, in Bucharest – March 7, 2004) was a Romanian Jewish physician, academic, politician, and philanthropist. He was the president of Federation Jewish Communities of Romania from 1994 until his death.

Biography
Cajal held a Ph.D. degree in virology and chaired the Ștefan S. Nicolau Virology Research Center in Bucharest for years. He was a Member of the Romanian Academy, the Romanian Medical Sciences Academy, the British Royal Society of Medicine, and the New York Academy of Sciences. From 1966, he was an expert for the World Health Organization. In 1944, Cajal worked as an intern in the hospital laboratories, in the laboratories of the bacteriology department of the Medical Faculty of Bucharest, and since 1945 at the department of inframicrobiology - virusology.

As a specialist in virology, Cajal was a disciple of Ștefan S. Nicolau, founder of the Romanian School of Virology. His contributions were published in over 400 scientific papers.

In 1966, Cajal became a professor and head of the virology department at the Institute of Medicine and Pharmacy of Bucharest, having passed through all the didactic degrees, being, in turn, through the competition, trainer, assistant, head of works, lecturer. Starting in 1967, Cajal was the director of the Institute of Virusology of the Romanian Academy.

Cajal was an active member of civil society, involved in improving awareness of war crimes carried out in World War II Romania and of the genocide in Transnistria and other occupied areas (see Romania during World War II).

Between 1990 and 1992, he was a senator for Bucharest, representing the National Salvation Front, the new moderate-Socialist government party after the Romanian Revolution. In his parliamentary activity, Cajal was a member of the parliamentary groups of friendship with the People's Republic of China, the State of Israel, and with the French Senate.

He was elected as a correspondent member in 1963 and in 1990 a full member of the Romanian Academy. He was vice-president of the Romanian Academy (1990-1994), president of the Medical Sciences Section and president of the M. H. Elias Foundation. He was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universities of Oradea (1994), Timișoara (1995), Cluj-Napoca (1995), and Iași (1996).

title: Nicolae Cajal


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Robert Khayat

Robert Conrad Khayat (born April 18, 1938) is an American former academic administrator and football player who was the 15th chancellor of the University of Mississippi. He played football professionally as a placekicker, guard, and center for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League (NFL).

Khayat played college football for the Ole Miss Rebels and was selected in the sixth round of the 1960 NFL draft. He played for the Washington for three seasons, earning a Pro Bowl selection in 1960. After his football career, Khayat became a lawyer. He was appointed chancellor of the University of Mississippi in 1995.

Early years
Khayat was born in Moss Point, Mississippi, to Lebanese parents. He attended Moss Point High School and the University of Mississippi. He received both bachelor of arts and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Mississippi. He also played football for the Ole Miss Rebels football team from 1957 to 1959. He also received an LL.M. degree from Yale University.

Professional football career
Khayat was selected by the Cleveland Browns in the 1960 NFL draft. He was then traded to the Washington Redskins in April 1960. He played for the Redskins during the 1960, 1962, and 1963 seasons. Following the 1960 season, he was named to the Pro Bowl squad. He appeared in a total of 40 NFL games and kicked 38 field goals and 90 extra points.

His brother Eddie Khayat also played and coached in the NFL.

Later years
Khayat later became a lawyer and taught law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.

He was appointed chancellor in 1995. In one of his first acts as chancellor, Khayat arranged for a $5.4 million gift from Jim and Sally Barksdale to establish an honors college at the university. In 1996, with enrollment declining, Khayat retained the public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, to conduct a survey of public perception — including university symbols. When The New York Times reported on the review, which included the Confederate Flag and other Old South symbols, a media frenzy ensued.

On January 6, 2009, Khayat announced his retirement effective June 30, 2009. He was succeeded by Daniel Jones on June 15, 2009.

Khayat's memoir, The Education of a Lifetime, was published on September 10, 2013.

title: Robert Khayat


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Studebaker-Packard Hawk series

The Studebaker-Packard Hawk series were cars produced by the merged Studebaker-Packard corporation between 1956 and 1964. All but the 1958 Packard Hawk were badged Studebaker. Described by the company as "family sports cars", they were all two-door, four-seat coupes and hardtops. They were an evolution of the long wheelbase (120") 1953 C/K models designed by Robert Bourke, lead designer with the Raymond Loewy Agency. The 1962 redesign as the GT Hawk was by another famed stylist, Brooks Stevens.

The precursor of the Hawks was the 1955 Studebaker Speedster, a special edition hardtop based on the Studebaker President with stainless steel trim above the rear window, usually fog lights on the front bumper, deluxe leather interior, a special dash and unique two tone paint combinations. The success of the Speedster led to the expanded line of 1956 Hawks as a competitor to the Ford Thunderbird and the Oldsmobile Starfire.

The four-model Hawk range launched in 1956, mirrored the engine and trim levels of the sedans. There were two coupes; the Flight Hawk was a base model powered by Champion's obsolete and underpowered flathead straight-6 enlarged to 185.6 cubic inch; the Power Hawk used Studebaker's mid-level OHV 259 cu. in. with either 180 hp 2-bbl or 195 hp with a 4-bbl in (4.7 L) V8 from the Commander; there were two hardtops; the Sky Hawk shared the larger OHV 289 in3 V8 and luxury trim with the Studebaker President, and Studebaker Golden Hawk, which stood at the top of the range. The Golden Hawk, fitted with Packard's powerful big-block 352 cubic inch 275 hp (5.8 L) V8, was the best all-around high performance car of 1956. Some feel by installing the largest V8 in the smallest lightest body, Studebaker created the first muscle car eight years before the GTO. It had the second highest power-to-weight ratio of any American production car. Contemporary road tests verified the Golden Hawk was faster/quicker in the 1/4 mile than the Corvette, Thunderbird and Chrysler 300B. In top speed, only the Chrysler 300B could equal it.

By 1956, Studebaker-Packard's financial condition had deteriorated to the point where there was no choice but to discontinue all manufacturing in the Packard facilities. Packard's Detroit factory and Utica proving grounds were closed. In a stop-gap effort to buy time for the development and financing of an all-new Packard, and to honor existing dealer contracts, a 1957 Packard that was merely a dressed up Studebaker President went into production at Studebaker's factory in South Bend. As Packard's V8 was no longer being produced, the new Packard as well as the 1957 Golden Hawk were fitted with Studebaker's largest 289 in3 V8, equipped with a McCulloch supercharger to produce the same 275 hp rated power output as the 1956 Packard V8. The range was simplified; the Sky Hawk was discontinued as too close to the Golden Hawk, while the two lowest models were replaced with a single Silver Hawk model, available with either the Champion straight-6 or 259 cubic inch (4.2 L) V8. 1958 saw a restyled and re-badged luxury version of the Golden Hawk sold as the Packard Hawk.

Studebaker sales continued a rapid decline in 1957-58, so for 1959 Studebaker-Packard discontinued the hardtop Golden Hawk, all Packards, and the Studebaker sedans; the Silver Hawk coupe was the only holdover left alongside the new Studebaker Lark range. It was a make-or-break year, but Studebaker's big gamble paid off; the smaller-appearing Lark was actually just the six-year-old sedans with a shorter wheelbase and abbreviated front and rear sheetmetal, but it was in the right place at the right time, a car the market wanted. The Silver Hawk served as a useful showroom draw, and it was continued; since it was the only Hawk model left, it was renamed simply the Studebaker Hawk and continued under that name through the end of 1961.

For the 1962 model year, Brooks Stevens restyled the GT Hawk and it was launched as the Gran Turismo Hawk. Its styling was well received, and sold relatively well for 1962. By 1963, Studebaker sales were in an irreversible death spiral. Even though the 1964 Super Hawk, available with an optional R2 supercharged engine, 4-speed transmission, TwinTraction limited-slip differential, front disc brakes and a sport suspension, was the best Hawk ever, production was ended with the rest of Studebaker's US production in December 1963.

title: Studebaker-Packard Hawk series


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Touchscreen

A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically layered on the top of the electronic visual display of a device. Touchscreens are commonly found in smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other electronic devices.

The display is often an LCD, AMOLED or OLED display.

A user can give input or control the information processing system through simple or multi-touch gestures by touching the screen with a special stylus or one or more fingers. Some touchscreens use ordinary or specially coated gloves to work, while others may only work using a special stylus or pen. The user can use the touchscreen to react to what is displayed and, if the software allows, to control how it is displayed; for example, zooming to increase the text size.

A touchscreen enables the user to interact directly with what is displayed, instead of using a mouse, touchpad, or other such devices (other than a stylus, which is optional for most modern touchscreens).

Touchscreens are common in devices such as smartphones, handheld game consoles, and personal computers. They are common in point-of-sale (POS) systems, automated teller machines (ATMs), and electronic voting machines. They can also be attached to computers or, as terminals, to networks. They play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and some e-readers. Touchscreens are important in educational settings such as classrooms or on college campuses.

The popularity of smartphones, tablets, and many types of information appliances has driven the demand and acceptance of common touchscreens for portable and functional electronics. Touchscreens are found in the medical field, heavy industry, automated teller machines (ATMs), and kiosks such as museum displays or room automation, where keyboard and mouse systems do not allow a suitably intuitive, rapid, or accurate interaction by the user with the display's content.

Historically, the touchscreen sensor and its accompanying controller-based firmware have been made available by a wide array of after-market system integrators, and not by display, chip, or motherboard manufacturers. Display manufacturers and chip manufacturers have acknowledged the trend toward acceptance of touchscreens as a user interface component and have begun to integrate touchscreens into the fundamental design of their products.

History

One predecessor of the modern touchscreen includes stylus based systems.

1946 DIRECT LIGHT PEN - A patent was filed by Philco Company for a stylus designed for sports telecasting which, when placed against an intermediate cathode ray tube display (CRT) would amplify and add to the original signal. Effectively, this was used for temporarily drawing arrows or circles onto a live television broadcast, as described in.

1962 OPTICAL - The first version of a touchscreen which operated independently of the light produced from the screen was patented by AT&T Corporation. This touchscreen utilized a matrix of collimated lights shining orthogonally across the touch surface. When a beam is interrupted by a stylus, the photodetectors which no longer are receiving a signal can be used to determine where the interruption is. Later iterations of matrix based touchscreens built upon this by adding more emitters and detectors to improve resolution, pulsing emitters to improve optical signal to noise ratio, and a nonorthogonal matrix to remove shadow readings when using multi-touch.

1963 INDIRECT LIGHT PEN - Later inventions built upon this system to free telewriting styli from their mechanical bindings. By transcribing what a user draws onto a computer, it could be saved for future use. See.

1965 CAPACITANCE AND RESISTANCE - The first finger driven touchscreen was developed by Eric Johnson, of the Royal Radar Establishment located in Malvern, England, who described his work on capacitive touchscreens in a short article published in 1965 and then more fully—with photographs and diagrams—in an article published in 1967.

MID-60s ULTRASONIC CURTAIN - Another precursor of touchscreens, an ultrasonic-curtain-based pointing device in front of a terminal display, had been developed by a team around Rainer Mallebrein at Telefunken Konstanz for an air traffic control system. In 1970, this evolved into a device named "Touchinput-Einrichtung" ("touch input facility") for the SIG 50 terminal utilizing a conductively coated glass screen in front of the display. This was patented in 1971 and the patent was granted a couple of years later. The same team had already invented and marketed the Rollkugel mouse RKS 100-86 for the SIG 100-86 a couple of years earlier.

1968 CAPACITANCE - The application of touch technology for air traffic control was described in an article published in 1968. Frank Beck and Bent Stumpe, engineers from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), developed a transparent touchscreen in the early 1970s, based on Stumpe's work at a television factory in the early 1960s. Then manufactured by CERN, and shortly after by industry partners, it was put to use in 1973.

1972 OPTICAL - A group at the University of Illinois filed for a patent on an optical touchscreen that became a standard part of the Magnavox Plato IV Student Terminal and thousands were built for this purpose. These touchscreens had a crossed array of 16×16 infrared position sensors, each composed of an LED on one edge of the screen and a matched phototransistor on the other edge, all mounted in front of a monochrome plasma display panel. This arrangement could sense any fingertip-sized opaque object in close proximity to the screen.

1973 MULTI-TOUCH CAPACITANCE - In 1973, Beck and Stumpe published another article describing their capacitive touchscreen. This indicated that it was capable of multi-touch but this feature was purposely inhibited, presumably as this was not considered useful at the time ("A...variable...called BUT changes value from zero to five when a button is touched. The touching of other buttons would give other non-zero values of BUT but this is protected against by software" (Page 6, section 2.6). "Actual contact between a finger and the capacitor is prevented by a thin sheet of plastic" (Page 3, section 2.3). At that time Projected capacitance had not yet been invented.

1977 RESISTIVE - An American company, Elographics – in partnership with Siemens – began work on developing a transparent implementation of an existing opaque touchpad technology, U.S. patent No. 3,911,215, October 7, 1975, which had been developed by Elographics' founder George Samuel Hurst. The resulting resistive technology touch screen was first shown on the World's Fair at Knoxville in 1982.

1982 MULTI-TOUCH CAMERA - Multi-touch technology began in 1982, when the University of Toronto's Input Research Group developed the first human-input multi-touch system, using a frosted-glass panel with a camera placed behind the glass.

1983 OPTICAL - An optical touchscreen was used on the HP-150 starting in 1983. The HP 150 was one of the world's earliest commercial touchscreen computers. HP mounted their infrared transmitters and receivers around the bezel of a 9-inch Sony cathode ray tube (CRT).

1983 MULTI-TOUCH FORCE SENSING TOUCHSCREEN - Bob Boie of AT&T Bell Labs, used capacitance to track the mechanical changes in thickness of a soft, deformable overlay membrane when one or more physical objects interact with it; the flexible surface being easily replaced, if damaged by these objects. The patent states "the tactile sensor arrangements may be utilized as a touch screen".

Many derivative sources  retrospectively describe Boie as making a major advancement with his touchscreen technology; but no evidence has been found that a rugged multi-touch capacitive touchscreen, that could sense through a rigid, protective overlay - the sort later required for a mobile phone, was ever developed or patented by Boie. Many of these citations rely on anecdotal evidence from Bill Buxton of Bell Labs. However, Bill Buxton did not have much luck getting his hands on this technology. As he states in the citation: "Our assumption (false, as it turned out) was that the Boie technology would become available to us in the near future. Around 1990 I took a group from Xerox to see this technology it [sic] since I felt that it would be appropriate for the user interface of our large document processors. This did not work out".

UP TO 1984 CAPACITANCE - Although, as cited earlier, Johnson is credited with developing the first finger operated capacitive and resistive touchscreens in 1965, these worked by directly touching wires across the front of the screen. Stumpe and Beck developed a self-capacitance touchscreen in 1972, and a mutual capacitance touchscreen in 1977. Both these devices could only sense the finger by direct touch or through a thin insulating film. This was 11 microns thick according to Stumpe's 1977 report.

1984 FIRST PROJECTED CAPACITANCE TOUCHSCREEN PATENT- A capacitance keypad and touchscreen, capable of multi-touch, that could "project" touch sensing through several centimeters of air and other non-conductive materials, was invented by a British inventor, Ron Binstead This enabled the accurate detection of fingers through very thick glass and even double-glazing (see keypad for image). The massively increased functionality was due to much greater processing power being available at that time, and the use of a simple form of artificial intelligence (see Patent Claim1). An Acorn BBC Computer was initially used to process the data. This technique later became known as projected capacitance.

Projected capacitance uses a simple form of artificial intelligence to measure the changes in capacitance caused by one or more fingers, by specifically profiling the capacitance effects expected for finger touch, and eliminating any measured capacitance changes attributable to other global and/or local events.

Instead of a keypad, the device could be used as a continuous x/y sensing area (see Claim 9). A transparent version was usable as a projected capacitance touchscreen (see Claim 10), but it was limited in size due to the high resistance of the narrow, transparent Indium Tin Oxide tracks (numbered 96 in the image) used to link all sensing zones (80,82,84,86,88,90) independently to a common edge.

1984 TOUCHPAD - Fujitsu released a touch pad for the Micro 16 to accommodate the complexity of kanji characters, which were stored as tiled graphics.

1986 GRAPHIC TABLET - A graphic touch tablet was released for the Sega AI Computer.

EARLY 80s EVALUATION FOR AIRCRAFT - Touch-sensitive control-display units (CDUs) were evaluated for commercial aircraft flight decks in the early 1980s. Initial research showed that a touch interface would reduce pilot workload as the crew could then select waypoints, functions and actions, rather than be "head down" typing latitudes, longitudes, and waypoint codes on a keyboard. An effective integration of this technology was aimed at helping flight crews maintain a high level of situational awareness of all major aspects of the vehicle operations including the flight path, the functioning of various aircraft systems, and moment-to-moment human interactions.

EARLY 80s EVALUATATION FOR CARS - also, in the early 1980s, General Motors tasked its Delco Electronics division with a project aimed at replacing an automobile's non-essential functions (i.e. other than throttle, transmission, braking, and steering) from mechanical or electro-mechanical systems with solid state alternatives wherever possible. The finished device was dubbed the ECC for "Electronic Control Center", a digital computer and software control system hardwired to various peripheral sensors, servos, solenoids, antenna and a monochrome CRT touchscreen that functioned both as display and sole method of input. The ECC replaced the traditional mechanical stereo, fan, heater and air conditioner controls and displays, and was capable of providing very detailed and specific information about the vehicle's cumulative and current operating status in real time. The ECC was standard equipment on the 1985–1989 Buick Riviera and later the 1988–1989 Buick Reatta, but was unpopular with consumers—partly due to the technophobia of some traditional Buick customers, but mostly because of costly technical problems suffered by the ECC's touchscreen which would render climate control or stereo operation impossible.

1985 GRAPHIC TABLET - Sega released the Terebi Oekaki, also known as the Sega Graphic Board, for the SG-1000 video game console and SC-3000 home computer. It consisted of a plastic pen and a plastic board with a transparent window where pen presses are detected. It was used primarily with a drawing software application.

1985 MULTI-TOUCH CAPACITANCE - The University of Toronto group, including Bill Buxton, developed a multi-touch tablet that used capacitance rather than bulky camera-based optical sensing systems (see History of multi-touch).

1985 USED FOR POINT OF SALE - The first commercially available graphical point-of-sale (POS) software was demonstrated on the 16-bit Atari 520ST color computer. It featured a color touchscreen widget-driven interface. The ViewTouch POS software was first shown by its developer, Gene Mosher, at the Atari Computer demonstration area of the Fall COMDEX expo in 1986.

1987 FIRST LARGE PROJECTED CAPACITANCE TOUCHSCREEN INVENTED - A large projected capacitance touchscreen was invented, by British inventor Ron Binstead. This sensed fingers through very thick glass and double-glazing, enabling touchscreens to be operated through shop windows. 16 touch sensing zones were connected directly to the four edges of the touchscreen (see inset image), thereby avoiding the necessity for narrow tracks linking sensing zones to the edge. An order was placed for $0.7M worth of these touchscreens for use in a US hotel chain.

1987 CAPACITANCE TOUCH KEYS - Casio launched the Casio PB-1000 pocket computer with a touchscreen consisting of a 4×4 matrix, resulting in 16 touch areas in its small LCD graphic screen.

1988 SELECT ON "LIFT-OFF" - Touchscreens had a bad reputation of being imprecise until 1988. Most user-interface books would state that touchscreen selections were limited to targets larger than the average finger. At the time, selections were done in such a way that a target was selected as soon as the finger came over it, and the corresponding action was performed immediately. Errors were common, due to parallax or calibration problems, leading to user frustration. "Lift-off strategy" was introduced by researchers at the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). As users touch the screen, feedback is provided as to what will be selected: users can adjust the position of the finger, and the action takes place only when the finger is lifted off the screen. This allowed the selection of small targets, down to a single pixel on a 640×480 Video Graphics Array (VGA) screen (a standard of that time).

1990 SINGLE AND MULTI-TOUCH GESTURES - Sears et al. (1990) gave a review of academic research on single and multi-touch human–computer interaction of the time, describing gestures such as rotating knobs, adjusting sliders, and swiping the screen to activate a switch (or a U-shaped gesture for a toggle switch). The HCIL team developed and studied small touchscreen keyboards (including a study that showed users could type at 25 wpm on a touchscreen keyboard), aiding their introduction on mobile devices. They also designed and implemented multi-touch gestures such as selecting a range of a line, connecting objects, and a "tap-click" gesture to select while maintaining location with another finger.

1990 TOUCHSCREEN SLIDER AND TOGGLE SWITCHES - HCIL demonstrated a touchscreen slider, which was later cited as prior art in the lock screen patent litigation between Apple and other touchscreen mobile phone vendors (in relation to ).

1991 THE FIRST PROJECTED CAPACITANCE PATENT IS GRANTED - The 1984 projected capacitance patent application is granted to Binstead Designs of Nottingham, England.

1991 INERTIAL CONTROL - From 1991 to 1992, the Sun Star7 prototype PDA implemented a touchscreen with inertial scrolling.

1993 CAPACITANCE MOUSE / KEYPAD - Bob Boie of AT&T Bell Labs, patented a simple mouse or keypad that capacitively sensed just one finger through a thin insulator. Although not claimed or even mentioned in the patent, this technology could potentially have been used as a capacitance touchscreen.

1993 FIRST RESISTIVE TOUCHSCREEN PHONE - IBM released the IBM Simon, which is the first touchscreen phone.

EARLY 90s ABANDONED GAME CONTROLLER - An early attempt at a handheld game console with touchscreen controls was Sega's intended successor to the Game Gear, though the device was ultimately shelved and never released due to the expensive cost of touchscreen technology in the early 1990s.

1994 FIRST X/Y PROJECTED CAPACITANCE TOUCHSCREEN PATENT - An x/y multiplexed, projected capacitance, multiple input proximity detector and touchpad / touchscreen, was invented by British inventor Ron Binstead. This was capable of multi-touch and could accurately and reliably sense fingers through thick plastic and glass overlays. Together with the inventors earlier patent, this was very similar to an Apple patent taken out 10 years later in 2004.

1994 FIRST WIRE BASED PROJECTED CAPACITANCE - Stumpe and Beck's touchscreens (1972/1977 - already cited), used opaque conductive copper tracks that obscured about 50% of the screen (80 micron track / 80 micron space). The advent of projected capacitance in 1984, however, with its improved sensing capability, indicated that most of these tracks could be eliminated. This proved to be so, and led to the invention of a wire based touchscreen in 1994, where one 25 micron diameter, insulation coated wire replaced about 30 of these 80 micron wide tracks, and could also accurately sense fingers through thick glass. Screen masking, caused by the copper, was reduced from 50% to less than 0.5%.

The use of fine wire meant that very large touchscreens, several meters wide, could be plotted onto a thin polyester support film with a simple x/y pen plotter, eliminating the need for expensive and complicated sputter coating, laser ablation, screen printing or etching. The resulting, incredibly flexible, touchscreen film, less than 100 microns thick, could be attached by static or non-setting weak adhesive to one side of a sheet of glass, for sensing through that glass. Early versions of this device were controlled by the PIC16C54 microchip.

1994 FIRST PUB GAME WITH TOUCHSCREEN - Appearing in pubs in 1994, JPM's Monopoly SWP (skill with prizes) was the first machine to use touch screen technology instead of buttons (see Quiz machine / History). It used a 14 inch version of this newly invented wire based projected capacitance touchscreen and had 64 sensing areas - the wiring pattern being similar to that shown in the lower diagram. The zig-zag pattern was introduced to minimize visual reflections and prevent Moire interference between the wires and the monitor line scans. About 600 of these were sold for this purpose, retailing at £50 apiece, which was very cheap for the time. Working through very thick glass made it ideal for operation in a "hostile" environment, such as a pub. Although reflected light from the copper wires was noticeable under certain lighting conditions, this problem was eliminated by using tinted glass. The reflection issue was later resolved by using finer (10 micron diameter), dark coated wires. Throughout the following decade JPM continued to use touchscreens for many other games such as "Cluedo" and "Who wants to be a Millionaire".

1998 PROJECTED CAPACITANCE LICENSES - This technology was licensed four years later to Romag Glass Products - later to become Zytronic Displays, and Visual Planet in 2003 (see page 4).

2004 MOBILE MULTI-TOUCH PROJECTED CAPACITANCE PATENT - Apple patents its multi-touch capacitive touchscreen for mobile devices.

2004 VIDEO GAMES WITH TOUCHSCREENS - Touchscreens were not be popularly used for video games until the release of the Nintendo DS in 2004.

2007 MOBILE PHONE WITH CAPACITANCE - The first mobile phone with a capacitive touchscreen was LG Prada, released in May 2007 (which was before the first iPhone released). By 2009, touchscreen-enabled mobile phones were becoming trendy and quickly gaining popularity in both basic and advanced devices. In Quarter-4 2009 for the first time, a majority of smartphones (i.e. not all mobile phones) shipped with touchscreens over non-touch.

2013 RESISTIVE VERSUS PROJECTED CAPACITANCE SALES - In 2007, 93% of touchscreens shipped were resistive and only 4% were projected capacitance. In 2013, 3% of touchscreens shipped were resistive and 96% were projected capacitance (see page 5).

2015 FORCE SENSING TOUCHSCREENS - Until recently, most consumer touchscreens could only sense one point of contact at a time, and few have had the capability to sense how hard one is touching. This has changed with the commercialization of multi-touch technology, and the Apple Watch being released with a force-sensitive display in April 2015.

2015 FIRST DIAGONALLY "WIRED" TOUCHSCREEN PATENT - A new diagonal "wiring" arrangement was invented by British inventor Ron Binstead, for use with resistive and multi-touch projected capacitance touchscreens - all the I/O elements coming from just one edge, and no bussed wires or "dead zone" round the other three edges (see top image on right). Touch resolution is almost doubled compared to x/y multiplexing. For example, 16 x/y I/Os create a maximum of 64 sensing element intersections, whereas 16 diagonal I/Os create 120 intersections.

2015 BISTATE PROJECTED CAPACITANCE - When used as a Projected Capacitance touchscreen, in mutual capacitance mode, diagonal wiring requires each I/O line to be capable of switching between two states (bistate), an output some of the time and an input at other times. I/Os are inputs most of the time, but, once every scan, one of the I/Os has to take its turn at being an output, the remaining input I/Os sensing any signals it generates. The I/O lines, therefore, may have to change from input to output, and vice versa, many times a second. This new design won an Electronics Weekly Elektra Award in 2017.

2021 FIRST "INFINITELY WIDE" TOUCHSCREEN PATENT - With standard x/y array touchscreens, the length of the horizontal sensing elements increases as the width of the touchscreen increases. Eventually, a limit is hit where the resistance gets so great that the touchscreen can no longer function properly.

The patent describes how the use of diagonal elements ensures that the length of any element never exceeds 1.414 times the height $ \left\lceil H \sqrt{2} \right\rfloor$ of the touchscreen, no matter how wide it is. This could be reduced to 1.15 times the height, if opposing diagonal elements intersect at 60 degrees instead of 90 degrees. The elongated touchscreen could be controlled by a single processor, or the distant ends could be controlled totally independently by different processors, linked by a synchronizing processor in the overlapping middle section. The number of unique intersections could be increased by allowing individual sensing elements to run in two opposing directions - as shown in the diagram.

Technologies
There are a number of touchscreen technologies, with different methods of sensing touch.

Resistive
A resistive touchscreen panel comprises several thin layers, the most important of which are two transparent electrically resistive layers facing each other with a thin gap between. The top layer (that which is touched) has a coating on the underside surface; just beneath it is a similar resistive layer on top of its substrate. One layer has conductive connections along its sides, the other along top and bottom. A voltage is applied to one layer and sensed by the other. When an object, such as a fingertip or stylus tip, presses down onto the outer surface, the two layers touch to become connected at that point. The panel then behaves as a pair of voltage dividers, one axis at a time. By rapidly switching between each layer, the position of pressure on the screen can be detected.

Resistive touch is used in restaurants, factories and hospitals due to its high tolerance for liquids and contaminants. A major benefit of resistive-touch technology is its low cost. Additionally, as only sufficient pressure is necessary for the touch to be sensed, they may be used with gloves on, or by using anything rigid as a finger substitute. Disadvantages include the need to press down, and a risk of damage by sharp objects. Resistive touchscreens also suffer from poorer contrast, due to having additional reflections (i.e. glare) from the layers of material placed over the screen. This type of touchscreen has been used by Nintendo in the DS family, the 3DS family, and the Wii U GamePad.

Due to their simple structure, with very few inputs, resistive touchscreens are mainly used for single touch operation, although some two touch versions (often described as multi-touch) are available. There are, however, some true multi-touch resistive touchscreens available. These need many more inputs, and rely on x/y multiplexing to keep the I/O count down.

One example of a true multi-touch resistive touchscreen, can detect 10 fingers at the same time. This has 80 I/O connections. These are possibly split 34 x inputs / 46 y outputs, forming a standard 3:4 aspect ratio touchscreen with 1564 x/y intersecting touch sensing nodes.

Tri-state multiplexing could have been used instead of x/y multiplexing. This would have reduced the I/O count from 80 to 60 while creating 1770 unique touch sensing nodes, with no need for a bezel, and with all inputs coming from just one edge.

Surface acoustic wave
Surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology uses ultrasonic waves that pass over the touchscreen panel. When the panel is touched, a portion of the wave is absorbed. The change in ultrasonic waves is processed by the controller to determine the position of the touch event. Surface acoustic wave touchscreen panels can be damaged by outside elements. Contaminants on the surface can also interfere with the functionality of the touchscreen.

SAW devices have a wide range of applications, including delay lines, filters, correlators and DC to DC converters.

Capacitive touchscreen

A capacitive touchscreen panel consists of an insulator, such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor, such as indium tin oxide (ITO). As the human body is also an electrical conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the screen's electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance. Different technologies may be used to determine the location of the touch. The location is then sent to the controller for processing. Some touchscreens use silver instead of ITO, as ITO causes several environmental problems due to the use of indium. The controller is typically a complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip, which in turn usually sends the signals to a CMOS digital signal processor (DSP) for processing.

Unlike a resistive touchscreen, some capacitive touchscreens cannot be used to detect a finger through electrically insulating material, such as gloves. This disadvantage especially affects usability in consumer electronics, such as touch tablet PCs and capacitive smartphones in cold weather when people may be wearing gloves. It can be overcome with a special capacitive stylus, or a special-application glove with an embroidered patch of conductive thread allowing electrical contact with the user's fingertip.

A low-quality switching-mode power supply unit with an accordingly unstable, noisy voltage may temporarily interfere with the precision, accuracy and sensitivity of capacitive touch screens.

Some capacitive display manufacturers continue to develop thinner and more accurate touchscreens. Those for mobile devices are now being produced with 'in-cell' technology, such as in Samsung's Super AMOLED screens, that eliminates a layer by building the capacitors inside the display itself. This type of touchscreen reduces the visible distance between the user's finger and what the user is touching on the screen, reducing the thickness and weight of the display, which is desirable in smartphones.

A simple parallel-plate capacitor has two conductors separated by a dielectric layer. Most of the energy in this system is concentrated directly between the plates. Some of the energy spills over into the area outside the plates, and the electric field lines associated with this effect are called fringing fields. Part of the challenge of making a practical capacitive sensor is to design a set of printed circuit traces which direct fringing fields into an active sensing area accessible to a user. A parallel-plate capacitor is not a good choice for such a sensor pattern. Placing a finger near fringing electric fields adds conductive surface area to the capacitive system. The additional charge storage capacity added by the finger is known as finger capacitance, or CF. The capacitance of the sensor without a finger present is known as parasitic capacitance, or CP.

Surface capacitance
In this basic technology, only one side of the insulator is coated with a conductive layer. A small voltage is applied to the layer, resulting in a uniform electrostatic field. When a conductor, such as a human finger, touches the uncoated surface, a capacitor is dynamically formed. The sensor's controller can determine the location of the touch indirectly from the change in the capacitance as measured from the four corners of the panel. As it has no moving parts, it is moderately durable but has limited resolution, is prone to false signals from parasitic capacitive coupling, and needs calibration during manufacture. It is therefore most often used in simple applications such as industrial controls and kiosks.

Although some standard capacitance detection methods are projective, in the sense that they can be used to detect a finger through a non-conductive surface, they are very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature, which expand or contract the sensing plates, causing fluctuations in the capacitance of these plates. These fluctuations result in a lot of background noise, so a strong finger signal is required for accurate detection. This limits applications to those where the finger directly touches the sensing element or is sensed through a relatively thin non-conductive surface.

Projected capacitance
Projected capacitive touch (PCT; also PCAP) technology is a variant of capacitive touch technology but where sensitivity to touch, accuracy, resolution and speed of touch have been greatly improved by the use of a simple form of artificial intelligence. This intelligent processing enables finger sensing to be projected, accurately and reliably, through very thick glass and even double glazing.

Projected capacitance is a method for accurately detecting and tracking a particular variable, or group of variables (such as finger(s)), by: a) using a simple form of artificial intelligence to develop a profile of the capacitance changing effects expected for that variable, b) specifically looking for such changes, and c) eliminating measured capacitance changes that do not match this profile, attributable to global variables (such as temperature/humidity, dirt build-up, electrical noise), and local variables (such as rain drops, partial shade and hands/elbows). Capacitance sensors may be discrete - possibly (but not necessarily) in a regular array, or they may be multiplexed.

Assumptions.

In practice, various assumptions are made, such as: - a) fingers will not be touching the screen at "power-up", b) a finger will not be on the same spot for more than a fixed period of time, and c) fingers will not be touching everywhere at the same time.

a) If a finger IS touching the screen at "power-up", then, as soon as it is removed a large "anti-touch" capacitance change will be detected. This signals to the processor to reset the touch thresholds and store new "no touch" values for each input.

b) Long-term drift compensation is used to gradually raise or lower these thresholds (trending eventually to "no-touch"). This compensates for global changes in temperature and humidity. It also eliminates the possibility of any position appearing to be touched for too long, due to some "non-finger" event. This might be caused, for example, by a wet leaf landing on, and sticking to the screen.

c) When a decision is to be made about the validity of one or more touches, then, assumption c) means that the average value, of changes measured for some of the inputs with the smallest change, can be used to "offset" the touch thresholds of the inputs in contention. This minimizes the influence of hands and arms.

By these and other means, the processor is constantly fine tuning the touch thresholds, and tweaking the touch sensitivity of each input. This enables very small changes, caused only by fingers, to be accurately detected through thick overlays, or several centimeters of air.

When a conductive object, such as a finger, comes into contact with a PCT panel, it distorts the local electrostatic field at that point. This is measurable as a change in capacitance. If a finger bridges the gap between two of the "tracks", the charge field is further interrupted and detected by the controller. The capacitance can be changed and measured at every individual point on the grid. This system is able to accurately track touches.

Due to the top layer of a PCT being glass, it is sturdier than less-expensive resistive touch technology. Unlike traditional capacitive touch technology, it is possible for a PCT system to sense a passive stylus or gloved fingers.

Moisture on the surface of the panel, high humidity, or collected dust are not a problem, especially with 'fine wire' based touchscreens due to the fact that wire based touchscreens have a very low 'parasitic' capacitance, and there is a greater distance between neighboring conductors. Projected capacitance has "long term drift compensation" built in. This minimizes the effects of slowly changing environmental factors, such as the build-up of dirt and effects caused by changes in the weather. Drops of rain have little effect, but flowing water, and especially flowing sea water (due to its electrical conductivity), can cause short term issues.

A high frequency (RF) signal, possibly from 100 kHz to 1 MHz, is imposed on one track at a time, and appropriate capacitance measurements are taken ( as described later in this article). This process is repeated until all the tracks have been sampled.

Conductive tracks are often transparent, one example being Indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent electrical conductor, but these conductive tracks can be made of very fine, non-transparent metal mesh or individual fine wires.

Projected capacitance touchscreen layout.

Layout can vary depending on whether a single finger is to be detected or multiple fingers.

In order to detect many fingers at the same time, some modern PCT touch screens are composed of thousands of discrete keys, each key being linked individually to the edge of the touch screen. This is enabled by etching an electrode grid pattern in a transparent conductive coating on one side of a sheet of glass or plastic. To reduce the number of input tracks, most PCT touch screens use multiplexing. This enables, for example, 100 (n) discrete key inputs to be reduced to 20 $ \left\lceil 2 \sqrt{n} \right\rfloor$ when using x/y multiplexing, or 15 $ \left\lceil 1.5 \sqrt{n} \right\rfloor$  if using bistate multiplexing or tri-state multiplexing.

Capacitance multiplexing requires a grid of intersecting, but electrically isolated conductive tracks. This can be achieved in many different ways. One way is by creating parallel conductive tracks on one side of a plastic film, and similar parallel tracks on the other side, orientated at 90 degrees to the first side.

Another way is to etch tracks on separate sheets of glass, and join these sheets, with tracks at right angles to each other, face to face using a thin non-conductive, adhesive interlayer. A simple alternative is to embed an x/y or diagonal grid of very fine, insulation coated conductive wires in a thin polyester film. This film can then be attached to one side of a sheet of glass, for operation through the glass.

Touch resolution and the number of fingers that can be detected simultaneously is determined by the number of cross-over points (x * y). If x + y = n, then the maximum possible number of cross-overs is (n/2)2. However, the number of cross-over points can be almost doubled by using a diagonal lattice layout ( see Lattice/diagonal touchscreen diagrams ) where, instead of x elements only ever crossing y elements, each conductive element crosses every other element. Under these circumstances the maximum number of cross-overs is (n2-n)/2. All the connector inputs come from just one edge.

See video (above) of raw data from 32 input diagonally wired touchscreen.

Diagonal touchscreen arrays

In 2015, a new diagonal array, suited to a range of touchscreen and keypad technologies, was invented and patented by Ron Binstead of Binstead Designs Ltd.

The diagram (left) shows how a group of 6 parallel conductive elements, folded back on themselves (at right angles), can create a triangular array of 15 unique intersections. An x/y array, with 6 conductive elements, would only have created a maximum of 9 unique intersections.

Although conductive elements are normally connected to a terminal at one end of the conductor, the left diagram shows that these folded elements can be terminated at the fold, thereby forming split (or bifurcated) elements.

A square/rectangular diagonal array can be formed by double folding the parallel conductors - see diagram on the right. Two connectors could be fitted at the folds, on opposite sides of the array. Alternatively, a single connector can be fitted at one end of the array - as shown in the diagram.

Cylindrical touchscreens. Diagonal sensing elements can also be formed into a seamless cylindrical array. The diagram on the right shows a split, 9 I/O, bi-state cylindrical layout, with 36 unique intersections - all the I/O lines connected to one end of the cylinder (a standard x/y array would require horizontal I/O lines entering the side of the cylinder). Unsplit diagonal sensing elements can also be formed into cylinders, but 9 I/Os would only create 20 (5x4) unique intersections. These cylinders can be physically transformed into complex 3 dimensional shapes, by a range of different methods, such as blow molding, vacuum forming, etc..

A similar layout is possible for a complementary cylindrical LED display - see Charlieplexing.

Infinitely wide touchscreens.

Touchscreen width is normally restricted by the resistance of the conductive material used. As the width of an x/y touchscreen is increased, eventually the resistance of the horizontal conductors becomes too great for the touchscreen to work properly. "Infinitely" wide touchscreens are possible, however, when using diagonal wiring, because track lengths are always 1.414 x the height of the touchscreen $ \left\lceil H \sqrt{2} \right\rfloor$, and are independent of touchscreen width (see diagram on right ).

There are two types of PCT: mutual capacitance and self-capacitance

Mutual capacitance
An electrical signal, imposed on one electrical conductor, can be capacitively "sensed" by another electrical conductor that is in very close proximity, but electrically isolated—a feature that is exploited in mutual capacitance touchscreens. In a mutual capacitive sensor array, the "mutual" crossing of one electrical conductor with another electrical conductor, but with no direct electrical contact, forms a capacitor (see touchscreen).

High frequency voltage pulses are applied to these conductors, one at a time. These pulses capacitively couple to every conductor that intersects it.

Bringing a finger or conductive stylus close to the surface of the sensor changes the local electrostatic field, which in turn reduces the capacitance between these intersecting conductors. Any significant change in the strength of the signal sensed is used to determine if a finger is present or not at an intersection.

The capacitance change at every intersection on the grid can be measured to accurately determine one or more touch locations. Mutual capacitance allows multi-touch operation where multiple fingers, palms or styli can be accurately tracked at the same time.The greater the number of intersections, the better the touch resolution and the more independent fingers that can be detected. This indicates a distinct advantage of diagonal wiring over standard x/y wiring, since diagonal wiring creates nearly twice the number of intersections.

A 30 i/o, 16×14 x/y array, for example, would have 224 of these intersections / capacitors, and a 30 i/o diagonal lattice array could have 435 intersections.

Each trace of an x/y mutual capacitance array only has one function, it is either an input or an output. The horizontal traces may be transmitters while the vertical traces are sensors, or vice versa.

The traces in a diagonal mutual capacitance array, however, have to continuously change their functionality, "on the fly", by a process called bi-state multiplexing or Tri-state multiplexing. Some of the time a trace will be an output, at another time it will be an input or "grounded". A "look-up" table can be used to simplify this process. By slightly distorting the conductors in a "n" I/O diagonal matrix, the equivalent of a (n-1) by (n/2) array is formed. After address decoding, this can then be processed as a standard x/y array.

Self-capacitance
Self-capacitance sensors can have the same X/Y or diagonal grid layout as mutual capacitance sensors, but, with self-capacitance all the traces usually operate independently, with no interaction between different traces. Along with several other methods, the extra capacitive load of a finger on a trace electrode may be measured by a current meter, or by the change in frequency of an RC oscillator.

Traces are sensed, one after the other until all the traces have been sensed. A finger may be detected anywhere along the whole length of a trace (even "off-screen"), but there is no indication where the finger is along that trace. If, however, a finger is also detected along another intersecting trace, then it is assumed that the finger position is at the intersection of the two traces. This allows for the speedy and accurate detection of a single finger.

There is, however, ambiguity if more than one finger is to be detected. Two fingers may have four possible detection positions, only two of which are true, the other two being "ghosts." However, by selectively de-sensitizing any touch-points in contention, conflicting results are easily resolved. This enables self-capacitance to be used for two touch operation.

Although mutual capacitance is simpler for multi-touch, multi-touch can be achieved using self-capacitance.

If the trace being sensed is intersected by another trace that has a "desensitizing" signal on it, then that intersection is insensitive to touch. By imposing such a "desensitizing" signal on all the intersecting traces, except one, along the trace being sensed, then just a short length of that trace will be sensitive to touch. By selecting a sequence of these sensing sections along the trace, it is possible to determine the accurate position of multiple fingers along the one trace. This process can then be repeated for all the other traces until the whole screen has been scanned.

Self-capacitive touch screen layers are used on mobile phones such as the Sony Xperia Sola, the Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S5, and Galaxy Alpha.

Self-capacitance is far more sensitive than mutual capacitance and is mainly used for single touch, simple gesturing and proximity sensing where the finger does not even have to touch the glass surface. Mutual capacitance is mainly used for multitouch applications. Many touchscreen manufacturers use both self and mutual capacitance technologies in the same product, thereby combining their individual benefits.

Self-capacitance vs. mutual capacitance
When using a 16 x 14 X/Y array to determine the position of a single finger by self-capacitance, 30 (i.e. 16 + 14) capacitance measurements are required. The finger being determined to be at the intersection of the strongest of the 16 x measurements and the strongest of the 14 y measurements. However, when using mutual capacitance, every intersection may have to be measured, making a total of 224 (i.e. 16 x 14) capacitance measurements. In this example, therefore, mutual capacitance requires nearly 7 times as many measurements as self-capacitance to detect the position of a finger. Many applications, such as selecting items from a list or menu, require just one finger, and self-capacitance is eminently suitable for such applications, due to the relatively low processing load, simpler processing method, the ability to sense through thick dielectric materials or air, and the possibility of reducing the number of inputs required, through repeat track layouts. For many other applications, however, such as for expanding / contracting items on the screen and for other gestures, two or more fingers need to be tracked.

Two fingers can be detected and tracked accurately using self-capacitance, but this does involve a few extra calculations, and 4 extra capacitance measurements to eliminate the 2 "ghost" positions. One method is to undertake a full self-capacitance scan, to detect the 4 ambiguous finger positions, then use just 4 targeted mutual capacitance measurements to discover which two of the 4 positions are valid and which 2 are not. This gives a total of 34 measurements—still far less than the 224 required when using mutual capacitance alone.

With 3 fingers, 9 disambiguations are required; with 4 fingers, 16 disambiguations etc.

With more fingers, it may be decided that the process of disambiguation is too unwieldy. If sufficient processing power is available, the switch can then be made to full mutual capacitance scanning.

Use of stylus on capacitive screens
Capacitive touchscreens do not necessarily need to be operated by a finger, but until recently the special styli required could be quite expensive to purchase. The cost of this technology has fallen greatly in recent years and capacitive styli are now widely available for a nominal charge, and often given away free with mobile accessories. These consist of an electrically conductive shaft with a soft conductive rubber tip, thereby resistively connecting the fingers to the tip of the stylus.

Infrared grid

An infrared touchscreen uses an array of X-Y infrared LED and photodetector pairs around the edges of the screen to detect a disruption in the pattern of LED beams. These LED beams cross each other in vertical and horizontal patterns. This helps the sensors pick up the exact location of the touch. A major benefit of such a system is that it can detect essentially any opaque object including a finger, gloved finger, stylus or pen. It is generally used in outdoor applications and POS systems that cannot rely on a conductor (such as a bare finger) to activate the touchscreen. Unlike capacitive touchscreens, infrared touchscreens do not require any patterning on the glass which increases durability and optical clarity of the overall system. Infrared touchscreens are sensitive to dirt and dust that can interfere with the infrared beams, and suffer from parallax in curved surfaces and accidental press when the user hovers a finger over the screen while searching for the item to be selected.

Infrared acrylic projection
A translucent acrylic sheet is used as a rear-projection screen to display information. The edges of the acrylic sheet are illuminated by infrared LEDs, and infrared cameras are focused on the back of the sheet. Objects placed on the sheet are detectable by the cameras. When the sheet is touched by the user, frustrated total internal reflection results in leakage of infrared light which peaks at the points of maximum pressure, indicating the user's touch location. Microsoft's PixelSense tablets use this technology.

Optical imaging
Optical touchscreens are a relatively modern development in touchscreen technology, in which two or more image sensors (such as CMOS sensors) are placed around the edges (mostly the corners) of the screen. Infrared backlights are placed in the sensor's field of view on the opposite side of the screen. A touch blocks some lights from the sensors, and the location and size of the touching object can be calculated (see visual hull). This technology is growing in popularity due to its scalability, versatility, and affordability for larger touchscreens.

Dispersive signal technology
Introduced in 2002 by 3M, this system detects a touch by using sensors to measure the piezoelectricity in the glass. Complex algorithms interpret this information and provide the actual location of the touch. The technology is unaffected by dust and other outside elements, including scratches. Since there is no need for additional elements on screen, it also claims to provide excellent optical clarity. Any object can be used to generate touch events, including gloved fingers. A downside is that after the initial touch, the system cannot detect a motionless finger. However, for the same reason, resting objects do not disrupt touch recognition.

Acoustic pulse recognition
The key to this technology is that a touch at any one position on the surface generates a sound wave in the substrate which then produces a unique combined signal as measured by three or more tiny transducers attached to the edges of the touchscreen. The digitized signal is compared to a list corresponding to every position on the surface, determining the touch location. A moving touch is tracked by rapid repetition of this process. Extraneous and ambient sounds are ignored since they do not match any stored sound profile. The technology differs from other sound-based technologies by using a simple look-up method rather than expensive signal-processing hardware. As with the dispersive signal technology system, a motionless finger cannot be detected after the initial touch. However, for the same reason, the touch recognition is not disrupted by any resting objects. The technology was created by SoundTouch Ltd in the early 2000s, as described by the patent family EP1852772, and introduced to the market by Tyco International's Elo division in 2006 as Acoustic Pulse Recognition. The touchscreen used by Elo is made of ordinary glass, giving good durability and optical clarity. The technology usually retains accuracy with scratches and dust on the screen. The technology is also well suited to displays that are physically larger.

Construction
There are several principal ways to build a touchscreen. The key goals are to recognize one or more fingers touching a display, to interpret the command that this represents, and to communicate the command to the appropriate application.

 Multi-touch projected capacitance screens

A very simple, low cost way to make a multi-touch projected capacitance touchscreen, is to sandwich an x/y or diagonal matrix of fine, insulation coated copper or tungsten wires between two layers of clear polyester film. This creates an array of proximity sensing micro-capacitors. One of these micro-capacitors every 10 to 15 mm is probably sufficient spacing if fingers are relatively widely spaced apart, but very high discrimination multi-touch may need a micro-capacitor every 5 or 6 mm. A similar system can be used for ultra-high resolution sensing, such as fingerprint sensing. Fingerprint sensors require a micro-capacitor spacing of about 44 to 50 microns.

The touchscreens can be manufactured at home, using readily available tools and materials, or it can be done industrially.

First, a "continuous-trace" wiring pattern is generated using a simple CAD system.

The wire is threaded through a plotter pen and plotted directly, as one continuous wire, onto a thin sheet of adhesive coated, clear polyester film (such as "window film"), using a standard, low cost x/y pen plotter. After plotting, the single wire is gently cut into individual sections with a sharp scalpel, taking care not to damage the film.

A second identical polyester film is laminated over the first film. The resulting touchscreen film is then trimmed to shape, and a connector is retro-fitted.

The end product is extremely flexible, being about 75 microns thick (about the thickness of a human hair). It can even be creased without loss of functionality.

The film can be mounted on, or behind non-conducting (or slightly conducting) surfaces. Usually, it is mounted behind a sheet of glass up to 12 mm thick (or more), for sensing through the glass.

This method is suitable for a wide range of touchscreen sizes from very small to several meters wide - or even wider, if using a diagonally wired matrix.

The end product is environmentally friendly as it uses recyclable polyester, and minute quantities of copper wire. The film could even have a second life as another product, such as drawing film, or wrapping film. Unlike some other touchscreen technologies, no complex processes or rare materials are used.

For non-touchscreen applications, other plastics (e.g. vinyl or ABS) may be used. The film can be blow molded or heat formed into complex three dimensional shapes, such as bottles, globes or car dashboards. Alternatively, the wires can be embedded in thick plastic such as fiber glass or carbon fiber body panels.

 Single touch resistive touchscreens

In the resistive approach, which used to be the most popular technique, there are typically four layers:

 * Top polyester-coated layer with a transparent metallic-conductive coating on the bottom.
 * Adhesive spacer
 * Glass layer coated with a transparent metallic-conductive coating on the top
 * Adhesive layer on the backside of the glass for mounting.

When a user touches the surface, the system records the change in the electric current that flows through the display.

 Dispersive signal

Dispersive signal technology measures the piezoelectric effect—the voltage generated when mechanical force is applied to a material that occurs chemically when a strengthened glass substrate is touched.

 Infrared

There are two infrared-based approaches. In one, an array of sensors detects a finger touching or almost touching the display, thereby interrupting infrared light beams projected over the screen. In the other, bottom-mounted infrared cameras record heat from screen touches.

In each case, the system determines the intended command based on the controls showing on the screen at the time and the location of the touch.

Development
The development of multi-touch screens facilitated the tracking of more than one finger on the screen; thus, operations that require more than one finger are possible. These devices also allow multiple users to interact with the touchscreen simultaneously.

With the growing use of touchscreens, the cost of touchscreen technology is routinely absorbed into the products that incorporate it and is nearly eliminated. Touchscreen technology has demonstrated reliability and is found in airplanes, automobiles, gaming consoles, machine control systems, appliances, and handheld display devices including cellphones; the touchscreen market for mobile devices was projected to produce US$5 billion by 2009.

The ability to accurately point on the screen itself is also advancing with the emerging graphics tablet-screen hybrids. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) plays a major role in this innovation due its high piezoelectric properties, which allow the tablet to sense pressure, making such things as digital painting behave more like paper and pencil.

TapSense, announced in October 2011, allows touchscreens to distinguish what part of the hand was used for input, such as the fingertip, knuckle and fingernail. This could be used in a variety of ways, for example, to copy and paste, to capitalize letters, to activate different drawing modes, etc.

Touchscreen enable
For touchscreens to be effective input devices, users must be able to accurately select targets and avoid accidental selection of adjacent targets. The design of touchscreen interfaces should reflect technical capabilities of the system, ergonomics, cognitive psychology and human physiology.

Guidelines for touchscreen designs were first developed in the 2000s, based on early research and actual use of older systems, typically using infrared grids—which were highly dependent on the size of the user's fingers. These guidelines are less relevant for the bulk of modern touch devices which use capacitive or resistive touch technology.

From the mid-2000s, makers of operating systems for smartphones have promulgated standards, but these vary between manufacturers, and allow for significant variation in size based on technology changes, so are unsuitable from a human factors perspective.

Much more important is the accuracy humans have in selecting targets with their finger or a pen stylus. The accuracy of user selection varies by position on the screen: users are most accurate at the center, less so at the left and right edges, and least accurate at the top edge and especially the bottom edge. The R95 accuracy (required radius for 95% target accuracy) varies from 7 mm in the center to 12 mm in the lower corners. Users are subconsciously aware of this, and take more time to select targets which are smaller or at the edges or corners of the touchscreen.

This user inaccuracy is a result of parallax, visual acuity and the speed of the feedback loop between the eyes and fingers. The precision of the human finger alone is much, much higher than this, so when assistive technologies are provided—such as on-screen magnifiers—users can move their finger (once in contact with the screen) with precision as small as 0.1 mm (0.004 in).

Hand position, digit used and switching
Users of handheld and portable touchscreen devices hold them in a variety of ways, and routinely change their method of holding and selection to suit the position and type of input. There are four basic types of handheld interaction:
 * Holding at least in part with both hands, tapping with a single thumb
 * Holding with two hands and tapping with both thumbs
 * Holding with one hand, tapping with the finger (or rarely, thumb) of another hand
 * Holding the device in one hand, and tapping with the thumb from that same hand

Use rates vary widely. While two-thumb tapping is encountered rarely (1–3%) for many general interactions, it is used for 41% of typing interaction.

In addition, devices are often placed on surfaces (desks or tables) and tablets especially are used in stands. The user may point, select or gesture in these cases with their finger or thumb, and vary use of these methods.

Combined with haptics
Touchscreens are often used with haptic response systems. A common example of this technology is the vibratory feedback provided when a button on the touchscreen is tapped. Haptics are used to improve the user's experience with touchscreens by providing simulated tactile feedback, and can be designed to react immediately, partly countering on-screen response latency. Research from the University of Glasgow (Brewster, Chohan, and Brown, 2007; and more recently Hogan) demonstrates that touchscreen users reduce input errors (by 20%), increase input speed (by 20%), and lower their cognitive load (by 40%) when touchscreens are combined with haptics or tactile feedback. On top of this, a study conducted in 2013 by Boston College explored the effects that touchscreens haptic stimulation had on triggering psychological ownership of a product. Their research concluded that a touchscreens ability to incorporate high amounts of haptic involvement resulted in customers feeling more endowment to the products they were designing or buying. The study also reported that consumers using a touchscreen were willing to accept a higher price point for the items they were purchasing.

Customer service
Touchscreen technology has become integrated into many aspects of customer service industry in the 21st century. The restaurant industry is a good example of touchscreen implementation into this domain. Chain restaurants such as Taco Bell, Panera Bread, and McDonald's offer touchscreens as an option when customers are ordering items off the menu. While the addition of touchscreens is a development for this industry, customers may choose to bypass the touchscreen and order from a traditional cashier. To take this a step further, a restaurant in Bangalore has attempted to completely automate the ordering process. Customers sit down to a table embedded with touchscreens and order off an extensive menu. Once the order is placed it is sent electronically to the kitchen. These types of touchscreens fit under the Point of Sale (POS) systems mentioned in the lead section.

"Gorilla arm"
Extended use of gestural interfaces without the ability of the user to rest their arm is referred to as "gorilla arm". It can result in fatigue, and even repetitive stress injury when routinely used in a work setting. Certain early pen-based interfaces required the operator to work in this position for much of the workday. Allowing the user to rest their hand or arm on the input device or a frame around it is a solution for this in many contexts. This phenomenon is often cited as an example of movements to be minimized by proper ergonomic design.

Unsupported touchscreens are still fairly common in applications such as ATMs and data kiosks, but are not an issue as the typical user only engages for brief and widely spaced periods.

Fingerprints

Touchscreens can suffer from the problem of fingerprints on the display. This can be mitigated by the use of materials with optical coatings designed to reduce the visible effects of fingerprint oils. Most modern smartphones have oleophobic coatings, which lessen the amount of oil residue. Another option is to install a matte-finish anti-glare screen protector, which creates a slightly roughened surface that does not easily retain smudges.

Glove touch
Capacitive touchscreens rarely work when the user wears gloves. The thickness of the glove and the material they are made of play a significant role on that and the ability of a touchscreen to pick up a touch.

Some devices have a mode which increases the sensitivity of the touchscreen. This allows the touchscreen to be used more reliably with gloves, but can also result in unreliable and phantom inputs. However, thin gloves such as medical gloves are thin enough for users to wear when using touchscreens; mostly applicable to medical technology and machines.

title: Touchscreen


text:
Talk:Cucumber sandwich

Tea?
We are at home to Mr Cockup here, I'm afraid. As the page on high tea correctly points out, high tea in England does not at all mean a polite meal with cucumber sandwiches, but a cooked meal - it's "high" by contrast with the lighter meal called just "tea", at which cucumber sandwiches might well occur. I've tried to correct it, but it's difficult when "tea" is so ambiguous, and some of its meanings unknown to some readers. seglea 07:57, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I'd call the tea with cucumber sandwiches, scones and so on 'afternoon tea'. Harry R 10:10, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

 * The problem arises from the fallacy perpetuated by the page High tea that what a term originally meant is its proper meaning and any more modern variants are wrong. In fact a search of the web reveals that both uses of the term high tea are acceptable. A large number of websites mention this 'popular misconception as to the proper meaning of the term high tea.' seemingly without realising that if the usage is, indeed, 'popular' then the meaning has effectively changed. Teaandcrumpets.com et al are entitled to be as prescriptive as they wish when it comes to definitions. An encyclopaedia cannot be prescriptive; it must be descriptive. Harry's suggestion seems like a good compromise so I have incorporated it.

I made another slight rewording to avoid making dill sound like a spice. The mediocrity or otherwise of the novels and films is neither here nor there when it comes to arriving at a definition of cucumber sandwiches. It is also inherently POV.

Some good stuff in this article now. Monk Bretton 10:37, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Going back up a comment or two... high tea doesn't say anything about which usage is "proper" so far as I can see, it just records - correctly - that there are two conflicting meanings, and that the difference is largely Anglo/American. That article is a bit of a mess for other reasons (there are major regional differences in the UK, and changes over time, too).  The point that mattered for this article was that it was mixing usages - an American usage of high tea in the context of a hyper-English set of social conventions.  "Afternoon tea" is a good compromise - it would seem a bit of a tautology in some communities, but it's not seriously ambiguous in any (except that if I remember rightly it also describes the afternoon smoko, or work-break, in New Zealand).  (sighs) Why do the patterns and names of meals change so quickly?  I does make our life difficult!  seglea 17:59, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

 * No, fair enough, the high tea article isn't as prescriptive as I imagined it to be (it has changed somewhat since I last looked at it.) I was disputing, for what it is worth, that high tea only meant a hot meal in the UK. But this article is looking good now, I think, so no worries. As for the High tea article it is a bit of a mess, as you say. It tries to include too many different concepts. But I shudder in the face of trying to change it. Quite apart from the regional differences there are the class nuances! Perhaps we need a 'List of mealtimes, as ordered by social class' page cross referenced with a 'List of mealtimes as ordered by region (UK)'! I think I might leave that to someone else. Monk Bretton 18:29, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

This is quite ironic. I was writing an essay about The Importance of Being Earnest, and I noticed a link to this page from the main page. I was coming here to add a mention about that play that I had just read a few days ago, when I saw the two quotes! What irony! cryptfiend64 22:10, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

Great article!
This article rules. mnemonic

 * I second the above :) Sam [Spade] 01:13, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Personal Experiences
has anyone here tried such a sandwich? any comments? mnemonic

Sure. In the last parish of which I was vicar, there was a great tradition for bring-and-share meals, and they were very good at them. When I was still very new there, the first one I went to I happened to say to the ladies behind the sandwich table, "What, no cucumber sandwiches?" Next one that was held, I arrived to find a special plate full of them, and labelled 'For the Vicar'. They weren't satisfied until I had eaten my way through the whole lot.

Oh, and very nice they were, too.

Tonusperegrinus 15:12, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Yep. My mother had a curious rectangular plate that was used for nothing else - though they were always served slightly tongue in cheek. seglea 03:33, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
 * perhaps she was a "cucumber sandwich purist?" mnemonic 21:34, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
 * See? I knew they existed! Monk Bretton 02:03, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

field trial mark I type a-b test 1
i just constructed my own cucumber sandwich of white bread, cucumber (sprinkled with white vinegar and lemon juice) and butter. i must report that it was quite good. ✈ James C. 23:40, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

Dad's Army
Personally I think that the cucumber sandwich has become something of a metaphor for a gentile genteel unmetropolitan middle class society, which probably expired in the seventies.

In the Classic British Sitcom, Dad's Army, there were numerous references to Godfrey's sister Dolly's cumcumber sandwiches. These should not be overlooked when trying to define the wider meaning of the culinary item!

Good Article!
I didn't know something so light-flavored could be that good. For the record, I recommend a bit of fresh rosemary, to spice it up, though.

I don't know why this article is listed as "needing to be cleaned up" I think it's very good

Cleanup (December 2005)
I've attempted to do some cleanup of the article as of early January 2006. Further edits are welcomed.

Possible Plagiarism!
One of the links references on the article page, Cucumber Sandwich, is very, very similar to this article. I'm not sure where the plagiarism occurred, or if the same author is responsible for both, but I wanted to make sure that it was noted. The reason I was alarmed when I saw the other article is that there are very slight, intentional variations on sentences, the sort of thing that a grade-school student would do when lifting an encyclopedia entry. It seems more likely to me that the Cucumber Sandwich article from articleworld was lifted from this one.

For instance, from Wikipedia:

Because the cucumber sandwich is usually considered a delicate food, the bread is sliced as thinly as possible. The peel of the cucumber is either removed or scored lengthwise with a fork before the cucumber is sliced, and the slices of cucumber are dried gently with a paper towel before use.

From, articleworld: The cucumber sandwich is considered a delicate food, so the bread is sliced very thin. The peel of the cucumber is either removed or sliced lengthwise. Then the cucumbers are dried on paper towels before they are used.

Neither article cites the other, so it appears that something fishy is going on! --Fthomas64 02:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Should be easy to determin based on the article history. GMRE (talk) 12:03, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Picture?
Can we get a picture perhaps? Or maybe I'll make one tomorrow and take a snap... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.31.52.252 (talk) 23:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC).
 * While the current picture is rather lovely, it is at odds with the opening section, which reads "The crusts of the bread are cut away cleanly and the sandwich sliced diagonally twice, creating four small triangular tea sandwiches." So how necessary to the traditional cucumber sandwich is the cut? smontg2 5:37 EDT, 10 January 2008  —Preceding comment was added at 22:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I LOVE that photo! All that silver-ware, hilarious.  It'd be better to change the wording to incorporate alternative slicing patterns than to lose that photo.  It really sums up the essence of what these sandwiches are all about.  I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of a "cucumber sandwich purist", but surely the idea is to slice them into dainty crustless bite-sized morcels, never mind at what angle.  Dare I say it, some snobs might even consider triangle sandwiches to be rather middle-class, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, despite the lack of references, this is the best article about a sandwich that I've ever read.  God Save the Queen!  Traveller palm (talk) 06:47, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

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Thanks
Great article! It provided much more info than I needed but it is all interesting. Thanks!  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 00:29, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

"cucumber's cooling nature"
Please give a source. This is POV and pseudoscience 91.39.123.231 (talk) 00:54, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

 * It's moist, so it obviously has this effect. Duh! GMRE (talk) 12:07, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

American slant
The whole article has a surprisingly American perspective, given that the subject is supposedly a totemic food of the effete English upper classes. It's even written in American English. 'Pullman loaf'? Never heard of it. --Ef80 (talk) 16:55, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Example in popular culture
The 1979 Bond movie Moonraker has a scene near its beginning where Bond meets Hugo Drax (a rich businessman, who will later turn out to be the villain) at Draxes home. During the meeting, Drax asks if he could interest Bond in a cucumber sandwitch, to which Bond responds "No thanks". GMRE (talk) 12:07, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Which cucumber?
The article does not say whether the cucumbers are fresh or pickled. Maybe it is immediately clear to a native speaker what is meant? (English is my second language.)

Can I conclude from "there were no cucumbers in the market this morning" that they are fresh? --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:20, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Cucumber sandwich