This required a study of pen barrel diameter and the balancing of batteries, digitizer technology components, ergonomics, and storage space constraints for the pen itself.
To digitize analog graphical data directly on computer-compatible medium, the operator of the digitizer manually traces graphical data with a moveable stylus.
This had the disadvantage of being somewhat slow to move, as well as requiring floor space equal to the size of the paper, but could double as a digitizer.
Depending on the exact hardware configuration, the hardware could be best described as a digitizer, a data logger or as a part of a specialized automatic control system.