Have You Heard Of Gorrilla Arm Syndrome?

This article just had to attract your attention. I bet it has left you imagine some weird pictures in your head. It should, if you don’t know what gorilla arm actually is, in computer terms. Since when did gorillas have anything to do with touch screen laptops?

Computer designers and testers were the first ones to use the term gorilla arm. You should know that the first ever touch screen computers were pretty big and they were only used in manufacturing factories. When they were first introduced to the workers, it was thought that it would speed up the production of those plants and that workers would find them comfortable. The result was exactly the opposite. Workers started to complain about how their arms were starting to get tired really fast after using the touch screen computers.

This happened because the ones that worked with the touch screen computers had to keep their hands in front of their bodies all the time, working with the computer. This led to extreme arm fatigue and very soon the workers completely lost the motor skills of their arms because they got tired. They started to become clumsy in working with their hands and they were complaining that their arms were heavy. From this set of symptoms, computer designers came with the name for the condition known as gorilla arms.

Computer designer were worried that touchscreen laptop computers could give the symptoms to their users. There aren’t so many touch screen laptop users to test this hypothesis because this technology is new.

In any case, computer designers believe that the results will be positive and that people won’t get gorilla arms by using touch screen laptops because the ones that use them today use them together with the normal keyboards, mice and other peripherals. Because they move their hands from the couch screen to the keyboard they allow their arms to rest and thus eliminating the possibility of getting gorilla arms.