The technology behind Surface is called Multi-touch. It has at least a 25-year history, beginning in 1982, with pioneering work being done at the University of Toronto (multi-touch tablets) and Bell Labs (multi-touch screens). The product idea for Surface was initially conceptualized in 2001 by Steven Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research. In October 2001, a virtual team was formed with Bathiche and Wilson as key members, to bring the idea to the next stage of development. In 2003, the team presented the idea to the Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in a group review. Later, the virtual team was expanded and a prototype nicknamed T1 was produced within a month. The prototype was based on an IKEA table with a hole
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“Pretty much all the devices that are available to consumers such as tablet PC’s, or businesses such as the smart boards and kiosk PC’s are single touch only. The devices just emulate normal mouse interaction with a single cursor. The touchtable, surface pc and perseptive pixels devices all allow you to interact with multiple touches at the same time, either both hands or several people at once. This bit is the most challenging, both from a hardware sensing, and a software processing perspective. I’m not too sure how the touchtable and perseptive pixels stuff works, but the Surface PC works using IR sensing, as decribed here.” http://geometrybag.wordpress.com/2007/06/15/build-your-own-touchtable/ “Anyway, after a bit of searching I found this site dedicated to building your own touch table using