Input device

What Is an Input Device?

Any number of computer peripherals can be classified as input devices. An input device is simply something that is used to interact with, or provide data to, the computer, as opposed to an output device that displays data for the user. Everyone that has used a computer has also used an input device, such as a keyboard or mouse. Without input devices, there would be no way to interact with computers.

The most common input devices are the mouse and keyboard. However, joysticks, touch screens, webcams, and microphones are considered input devices as well. Some more exotic input devices that most people do not use on a daily basis are three-dimensional navigation devices. Some examples of this type of input device are mice that can point to 3D space, or punch card readers used in the early days of computing.

Keyboard

Most common and very popular input device is keyboard. The keyboard helps in inputting the data to the computer. The layout of the keyboard is like that of traditional typewriter, although there are some additional keys provided for performing some additional functions.
Keyboards are of two sizes 84 keys or 101/102 keys, but now 104 keys or 108 keys keyboard is also available for Windows and Internet.
The keys are following

Sr. No.	Keys	Description
1	Typing Keys	These keys include the letter keys (A-Z) and digits keys (0-9) which generally give same layout as that of typewriters.
2	Numeric Keypad	It is used to enter numeric data or cursor movement. Generally, it consists of a set of 17 keys that are laid out in the same configuration used by most adding machine and calculators.
3	Function Keys	The twelve functions keys are present on the keyboard. These are arranged in a row along the top of the keyboard. Each function key has unique meaning and is used for some specific purpose.
4	Control keys	These keys provide cursor and screen control. It includes four directional arrow key. Control keys also include Home, End, Insert, Delete, Page Up, Page Down, Control(Ctrl), Alternate(Alt), Escape(Esc).
5	Special Purpose Keys	Keyboard also contains some special purpose keys such as Enter, Shift, Caps Lock, Num Lock, Space bar, Tab, and Print Screen.

Mouse

Mouse is most popular Pointing device. It is a very famous cursor-control device. It is a small palm size box with a round ball at its base which senses the movement of mouse and sends corresponding signals to CPU on pressing the buttons.
Generally, it has two buttons called left and right button and scroll bar is present at the mid. Mouse can be used to control the position of cursor on screen, but it cannot be used to enter text into the computer.

Advantages

• Easy to use
• Not very expensive
• Moves the cursor faster than the arrow keys of keyboard.

Joystick

Joystick is also a pointing device, which is used to move cursor position on a monitor screen. It is a stick having a spherical ball at its both lower and upper ends. The lower spherical ball moves in a socket. The joystick can be moved in all four directions.
The function of joystick is similar to that of a mouse. It is mainly used in Computer Aided Designing (CAD) and playing computer games.

Light Pen

Light pen is a pointing device, which is similar to a pen. It is used to select a displayed menu item or draw pictures on the monitor screen. It consists of a photocell and an optical system placed in a small tube.
When light pen's tip is moved over the monitor screen and pen button is pressed, its photocell sensing element, detects the screen location and sends the corresponding signal to the CPU.

Track Ball

Track ball is an input device that is mostly used in notebook or laptop computer, instead of a mouse. This is a ball, which is half inserted and by moving fingers on ball, pointer can be moved.
Since the whole device is not moved, a track ball requires less space than a mouse. A track ball comes in various shapes like a ball, a button and a square.

Scanner

Scanner is an input device, which works more like a photocopy machine. It is used when some information is available on a paper and it is to be transferred to the hard disc of the computer for further manipulation.
Scanner captures images from the source which are then converted into the digital form that can be stored on the disc. These images can be edited before they are printed.

Digitizer

Digitizer is an input device, which converts analog information into a digital form. Digitizer can convert a signal from the television camera into a series of numbers that could be stored in a computer. They can be used by the computer to create a picture of whatever the camera had been pointed at.
Digitizer is also known as Tablet or Graphics Tablet because it converts graphics and pictorial data into binary inputs. A graphic tablet as digitizer is used for doing fine works of drawing and images manipulation applications.

Microphone

Microphone is an input device to input sound that is then stored in digital form. The microphone is used for various applications like adding sound to a multimedia presentation or for mixing music.

Magnetic Ink Card Reader (MICR)

MICR input device is generally used in banks because of a large number of cheques to be processed everyday. The bank's code number and cheque number are printed on the cheques with a special type of ink that contains particles of magnetic material that are machine readable.
This reading process is called Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR). The main advantage of MICR is that it is fast and less error prone.