Gorilla arm

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Gorilla arm is a hackers slang term. This refers to an undesirable ergonomic effect in which a vertically mounted touch screen monitor requires a user to hold his or her arm in an unsupported horizontal position for a prolonged period of time, causing muscle fatigue (your arm feels heavy like a gorilla's).

The lack of popularity for touchscreen systems has often been attributed to this effect. Note that the only place where vertical touch screens are common are in kiosk applications such as bank ATMs (where the usage time is fairly short and the gorilla arm effect is minimal).

[edit] Sources

• This article is based in part on the Jargon File, which is in the public domain.