John J. Loud holds the first 1888 patent for a ballpoint pen. He described this as a writing instrument capable of writing on rough surfaces such as wood, coarse wrapping paper and other surfaces that common fountain or quill pens could not. Unfortunately, Loud’s ballpoint pen was unsuitable for smooth writing and his patent lapsed. In 1938, Biro, a Hungarian newspaper editor, invented the actual ballpoint pen we are so familiar with today.
Writing on ordinary paper does not allow interfacing to the computer and transferring handwritten notes to the electronic media has always posed difficulties. However, a new development by Anoto Sweden is set to overcome this handicap faced by the humble ballpoint pen and paper and turn them into a suitable digital writing interface anyone can use.
The Anoto pen is hardly distinguishable from an ordinary ballpoint pen. Removing and replacing the cap constitutes a simple on-off function. In the Anoto concept, the pen has a digital camera and an advanced image processor inside it. Data from the pen travels wirelessly to the PC via a radio transceiver built into the pen.
The digital pen can use any ordinary paper printed with a special proprietary grid pattern. This grid only makes the paper look somewhat off-white to the user. The pen contains real ink that leaves its mark on the paper. A camera, built into the digital pen, takes snapshots of the grid nearly fifty times each second in infrared light and memorizes the position of the pen with respect to the grid. As the ink is invisible to the infrared camera, the pen keeps no record of the marks on the paper. The built-in memory stores several pages of handwritten text.
The Anoto patterned paper the user is writing on is actually a tiny part of one large sheet with several domains. These are set aside for various specific activities such as a digital notepad or licensed to companies for use as certain applications. Anoto can configure each domain for a different functionality, which the pen recognizes based on its position on the gird and reacts accordingly. The entire grid pattern covers nearly 60 million square kilometers so you can stop worrying over running out of paper.
The Sony Ericsson Chatpen from Sony is the world’s first digital pen built with the Anoto concept. It looks like a somewhat chubbier version of a normal ballpoint pen, offering little hint of the cutting-edge technology concealed within. There are other Anoto partners such as Vodafone, to supply the GPRS network and Esselte and 3M, to supply the paper products. Anoto is sparing no efforts for making this the standard infrastructure for digital paper. For this, Anoto is entering into alliances with Microsoft, MeadWestvacod and Logitech. Microsoft is incorporating the functionality of the digital pen into its .NET platform.
The Anoto digital pen and paper concept has an incredible scope of potential applications. As a simple example, you can scribble a quick note on your pad and then send it as a fax or an email simply by ticking the send box printed in a corner of your page. Astonishingly, you will be doing this without access to a computer.
