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# Typical Input Devices ## Sound Capture Devices All modern computers have a built-in microphone to capture sound. This means that you can record your voice, for example, to make comments that are embedded in a word-processing document. Your computer must have a sound card to record voice or music....

# Typical Input Devices ## Sound Capture Devices All modern computers have a built-in microphone to capture sound. This means that you can record your voice, for example, to make comments that are embedded in a word-processing document. Your computer must have a sound card to record voice or music. The sound card digitises the sound information into a form that the computer can understand. ## MIDI Instruments Electronic musical instruments can have a MIDI port (musical instrument digital interface) for input into the computer. The sounds are digitised and stored as a file, and can be displayed on the screen, edited and played back, using appropriate software. A sound studio has the equipment and software needed to record, digitise, store and edit different types of audio, for example, voice and instruments. # Biometric Systems Biometrics refers to the automatic identification of a person based on their individual body characteristics. The features that can be measured include face, fingerprints, hand geometry (the pattern of lines on your hand), iris, retina, vein and voice. Fingerprint readers are now built into some computer keyboards (see Figure 2.19). Retinal-identification devices use a ray of light to identify the distinctive network of blood vessels at the back of the eyeball. Using biometrics to confirm a person's identity is becoming widely used, as they are considerably more accurate than current methods such as passwords or PINs (personal identification numbers), which are used with ATM cards. Biometric technologies require that the person to be identified is physically present at the point of identification. They can potentially prevent unauthorised use of ATMs, cell phones, smart cards, desktop PCs, workstations and computer networks. # Figure 2.18 A sound studio has the equipment and software to produce audio recordings. # Figure 2.19 A fingerprint reader on a laptop # Figure 2.20 Biometrics requires the person to be physically present in order to be identified.