That equipment is from a different time, and different way of thinking. To modern eyes the device on the right is a mouse tablet. When it was made it was very much a digitizing tablet, primarily to get designs from paper into the machines. Hence, the magnifier with cross hairs. Those tablets were expected to have extreme linearity in both the X and Y directions, and a precise step count per centimetre. These days such precision is rarely necessary. Any ability to use the tablet as a pointer device was secondary, and often strongly discouraged.
That equipment is from a different time, and different way of thinking. To modern eyes the device on the right is a mouse tablet. When it was made it was very much a digitizing tablet, primarily to get designs from paper into the machines. Hence, the magnifier with cross hairs. Those tablets were expected to have extreme linearity in both the X and Y directions, and a precise step count per centimetre. These days such precision is rarely necessary. Any ability to use the tablet as a pointer device was secondary, and often strongly discouraged.Actually those tablets often came with different "mice"/pointing devices.
Wacom used to make these back in the day too. We had stylus/pen for it, the digitizer with the crosshair and also a regular mouse which didn't have a ball but an inductive sensor (optical mice weren't invented/common yet).
The only difference between the mouse and the digitizer was that the reference point was under the crosshair and not at the top of the mouse (about 2cm or so offset). Our digitizer also didn't have a magnifier, it was just a mouse-like body with a bit of plexiglass attached in front with a scribed crosshair in the middle. As you said - the idea was to digitize paper drawings with that - it was less fiddly and more accurate than using the pen for it.
Wacom used to make these back in the day too. We had stylus/pen for it, the digitizer with the crosshair and also a regular mouse which didn't have a ball but an inductive sensor (optical mice weren't invented/common yet).Wacom came late in the day, and was always focussed on its pen input, with mice and other gadgets being a secondary focus. They never really offered the high resolution of a Summagraphics, but they lead offer wireless handheld devices. That was their big innovation.
The king of the digitising tablets, Summagraphics, actually became an early king of actual mice. Sun and other workstation makers used their mice. They required a special pad with matrix of lines that was scanned optically by the mouse. Much cruder than today's correlation based optical mouse, but great for their time.
The king of the digitising tablets, Summagraphics, actually became an early king of actual mice. Sun and other workstation makers used their mice. They required a special pad with matrix of lines that was scanned optically by the mouse. Much cruder than today's correlation based optical mouse, but great for their time.
I'd put a huge asterisk after that "great"... they were pretty advanced technologically, but imho were actually a significantly worse experience to use compared to simpler but well built electromechanical ones.
Wacom used to make these back in the day too. We had stylus/pen for it, the digitizer with the crosshair and also a regular mouse which didn't have a ball but an inductive sensor (optical mice weren't invented/common yet).Wacom came late in the day, and was always focussed on its pen input, with mice and other gadgets being a secondary focus. They never really offered the high resolution of a Summagraphics, but they lead offer wireless handheld devices. That was their big innovation.How do you figure? The Wacom tablet I bought in the mid-90s had the same 2540lpi resolution of the SummaGraphics, and as far as I know that was in no way new in that generation of Wacom tablets. The manual specifies 0.15mm accuracy with the puck, 0.25mm with the pen.
That equipment is from a different time, and different way of thinking. To modern eyes the device on the right is a mouse tablet. When it was made it was very much a digitizing tablet, primarily to get designs from paper into the machines. Hence, the magnifier with cross hairs. Those tablets were expected to have extreme linearity in both the X and Y directions, and a precise step count per centimetre. These days such precision is rarely necessary. Any ability to use the tablet as a pointer device was secondary, and often strongly discouraged.
Wacom used to make these back in the day too. We had stylus/pen for it, the digitizer with the crosshair and also a regular mouse which didn't have a ball but an inductive sensor (optical mice weren't invented/common yet).Wacom came late in the day, and was always focussed on its pen input, with mice and other gadgets being a secondary focus. They never really offered the high resolution of a Summagraphics, but they lead offer wireless handheld devices. That was their big innovation.How do you figure? The Wacom tablet I bought in the mid-90s had the same 2540lpi resolution of the SummaGraphics, and as far as I know that was in no way new in that generation of Wacom tablets. The manual specifies 0.15mm accuracy with the puck, 0.25mm with the pen.It might have been just the lack of a puck with fine crosshairs and a lens for the Wacom tablets, but I found them less effective for digitizing. Now you mention it, the actual steps per centimetre must have been competitive, so achieve their smooth fine pen drawing performance.
Wacom used to make these back in the day too. We had stylus/pen for it, the digitizer with the crosshair and also a regular mouse which didn't have a ball but an inductive sensor (optical mice weren't invented/common yet).Wacom came late in the day, and was always focussed on its pen input, with mice and other gadgets being a secondary focus. They never really offered the high resolution of a Summagraphics, but they lead offer wireless handheld devices. That was their big innovation.How do you figure? The Wacom tablet I bought in the mid-90s had the same 2540lpi resolution of the SummaGraphics, and as far as I know that was in no way new in that generation of Wacom tablets. The manual specifies 0.15mm accuracy with the puck, 0.25mm with the pen.It might have been just the lack of a puck with fine crosshairs and a lens for the Wacom tablets, but I found them less effective for digitizing. Now you mention it, the actual steps per centimetre must have been competitive, so achieve their smooth fine pen drawing performance.Can you be more specific? Are you saying that Wacom’s lens and crosshairs were less effective in some way than SummaGraphics’? Or that they didn’t offer a puck with lens and crosshairs at all? (Because they most certainly did.)
18x25” active area doesn’t qualify? (Honest question, not being snarky.) Dunno if that’s the biggest they ever made, just the largest version of the tablet I had back then.