Frank Beck (28 December 1930 – 3 February 2020) was a British computer scientist who pioneered the application of user-interface hardware including the touchscreen, the computer-controlled knob and the video wall while working at CERN during the 1970s.
In 1967 Beck was invited to work at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago in the United States, and the family moved to La Grange, Illinois .
Activity at CERN in the meantime focussed on the construction of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), and in 1972 Beck was invited back to Europe to design and build the SPS control room and its hardware and software in the environment of a revolutionary multicomputer control system being constructed by a group under Michael Crowley-Milling.
In 1973 he published a CERN document, along with his colleague Bent Stumpe, outlining the concept for a prototype touchscreen as well as a multi-function computer-configurable knob,[3] both of which found their way onto the consoles of the finished control room.
The CERN touchscreen was arguably the first practical device of its kind and used a matrix of transparent capacitative pads above a cathode-ray tube.