Input Devices
Barcode Reader: A barcode reader (or barcode scanner) is an electronic device for reading printed barcodes. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor translating optical impulses into electrical ones. Additionally, nearly all barcode readers contain decoder circuitry analyzing the barcode's image data provided by the sensor and sending the barcode's content to the scanner's output port.
Light pen: A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's CRT TV set or monitor. It allows the user to point to displayed objects, or draw on the screen, in a similar way to a touch screen but with greater positional accuracy.
Joystick: A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. A popular variation of the joystick used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick.
Web camera: Webcams are video capture devices connected to computers or computer networks, often using a USB port or, if they connect to networks, via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Their most popular use is for video telephony, permitting a computer to act as a videophone or video conferencing station. Other popular uses, which include the recording of video files or even still-images, are accessible via numerous software programs, applications and devices.
Magnetic stripe reader: A magnetic stripe card is a type of card capable of storing data by modifying the magnetism of tiny iron-based magnetic particles on a band of magnetic material on the card. The magnetic stripe, sometimes called a magistrate, is read by physical contact and swiping past a reading head. Magnetic stripe cards are commonly used in credit cards, identity cards, and transportation tickets.
Touch screen: A touch screen is a display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touch or contact to the display of the device by a finger or hand. Touch screens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus. However, if the object sensed is active, as with a light pen, the term touch screen is generally not applicable. The ability to interact directly with a display typically indicates the presence of a touch screen.
Punched Cards: A punch card or punched card ...
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Touch screen: A touch screen is a display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touch or contact to the display of the device by a finger or hand. Touch screens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus. However, if the object sensed is active, as with a light pen, the term touch screen is generally not applicable. The ability to interact directly with a display typically indicates the presence of a touch screen.
Punched Cards: A punch card or punched card (or punch card or Hollerith card or IBM card), is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Now almost an obsolete recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for operating fairground organs and related instruments. It was used through the 20th century in unit record machines for input, processing, and data storage. Early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data, with offline data entry on key punch machines. Some voting machines use punched cards.
Digital Camera: A digital camera (or digicam for short) is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. Digital cameras can do things film cameras cannot: displaying images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, storing thousands of images on a single small memory device, recording video with sound, and deleting images to free storage space.
Output Devices
* Printers: A printer produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form usually on physical print media such as paper.
* Impact printers: Use a print head containing a number of metal pins which strike an inked ribbon placed between the print head and the paper.
* Dot Matrix printer: A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like a typewriter. Unlike a typewriter or daisy wheel printer, letters are drawn out of a dot matrix, and thus, varied fonts and arbitrary graphics can be produced. Because the printing involves mechanical pressure, these printers can create carbon copies and carbonless copies.
* Impact Printers: Printers are much quieter than impact printers as their printing heads do not strike the paper.
* Thermal Printers: A thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermo chromic paper, or thermal paper as it is commonly known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing an image.
* Laser Printers: A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers (MFPs), laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.
* Ink Jet printers: Inkjet printers operate by propelling variably-sized droplets of liquid or molten material (ink) onto almost any sized page. They are the most common type of computer printer for the general consumer due to their low cost, high quality of output, capability of printing in different colors, and ease of use.
Visual Display Unit: A monitor or display (sometimes called a visual display unit) is a piece of electrical equipment which displays images generated by devices such as computers, without producing a permanent record. The monitor comprises the actual display device, circuitry, and an enclosure. The display device in modern monitors is typically a thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD), while older monitors use a cathode ray tube (CRT).
Computer Aided Manufacture: Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) is the use of computer-based software tools that assist engineers and machinists in manufacturing or prototyping product components. Its primary purpose is to create a faster production process and components with more precise dimensions and material consistency, which in some cases, uses only the required amount of raw material (thus minimizing waste), while simultaneously reducing energy consumption. CAM is a programming tool that makes it possible to manufacture physical models using computer-aided design (CAD) programs. CAM creates real life versions of components designed within a software package. CAM was first used in 1971 for car body design and tooling.
Storage Devices
Magnetic Tape: Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording generally consisting of a thin magnetize coating on a long and narrow strip of plastic. Nearly all recording tape is of this type, whether used for recording audio or video or for computer data storage. Devices that record and playback audio and video using magnetic tape are generally called tape recorders and video tape recorders respectively. A device that stores computer data on magnetic tape can be called a tape drive, a tape unit, or a streamer.
Floppy Disk: A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible ("floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive.
Hard Disk: A hard disk drive (often shortened as "hard disk", "hard drive", or "HDD"), is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces.
Zip Drive: The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable disk storage system, introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of only 25 and 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB. The format became the most popular of the super-floppy type products but was never popular enough to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disk.
Jaz Drive: The Jaz drive was a removable disk storage system, introduced by the Iomega company in 1995. The system has since been discontinued. The Jaz disks were originally released with a 1 GB capacity (there was also 540 MB, but it was unreleased) in a 31/2-inch form factor, which was a significant increase over Iomega's most popular product at the time, the Zip drive.
