Re: OT: computer keyboard advertisement mentions Quenya

> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Eric
Christopherson

> On Feb 28, 2008, at 8:40 PM, li_sasxsek@NUTTER.NET wrote:
>
> >> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Mark J. Reed
> >
> >> Ans who else remembers light pens, the poor man's touch screen?
:)
> >
> > Had one.
>
> I had one too, for my Commodore 128. I think it cost $70 in the
late
> '80s. I loved it, especially to draw with, and have often wondered
> why they didn't really catch on, but I guess it might be (as
> Wikipedia says) the ergonomic problems involved.
Mine was for my Apple II.  I bought it.  Played with it breifly and
never used it again. ISTR is costing a lot more than that, even at
my cost.

One problem with light pens was that they needed light.  Back then,
most monitors were still monochrome.  The pen would sense the beam
of light and determine the position but the timing of the raster.
If there was no beam, as with black pixels, there was nothing to
sense.  That's why you'd often see a white block on the screen in
programs that used this technology.  If you ever had any of those
shoot-em-up games with the toy guns, they were basically just cheap
light pens.  For drawing, I haven't seen anything better than a
full-sized graphics tablet.

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