Touch-sensitive displays in the control-room

By the early 1970s, computer systems had become inseparable from the task of controlling a plant, and the need to improve the human-machine interface in the control-room began to be recognised. The use of conventional hard-wired knobs and dials could no longer be sustained in an environment in which most important data were generated by and stored on computer. In parallel it was realised that the advantages brought by distributed computer systems to plant control-their reliability, flexibility and extensibility-would be no less valuable in the user interface domain. However, there was a barrier to the computerisation of the control-room: the almost universal use of the keyboard as the user-interface device. Plant operators did not possess keyboard skills, and were unwilling to learn them. In the light of these developments, the Central Electricity Generating Board initiated research into the human-computer interface in the control-room. Work on the first touch-screen systems began at the CEGB´s Scientific Services Laboratories in Bristol in 1978. This paper recounts the history of this work, the lessons learned and points the way forward for control-room interface design in the future