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The History of PDAs in Words and Pictures
evanak writes "For the past four years, I've been studying the history of PDAs. It's all summarized in a 10,000-word article on my web site." This history is also illustrated with some pictures and photographs, which are worth it all by themselves.
I totally agree. While the page title is "history of PDAs" the document title is actually "The Evolution of PDAs."
While it could be argued that since the introduction of the Pilot 1000, PDAs haven't "evolved" much (except the merger with cell phones), there has been an explosion of types and functionality. The proliferation of commercial, shareware and freeware applications for the Palm OS led to the explosion of usage. Now, just about everyone can find an industry-specific application that is useful.
Also, the form factor and specifications have improved dramatically as well. The transition from the Pilot 1000 to the Tungsten T3 is worthy of its own essay.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
Quite an interesting article. I never realized that Thomas Edison built the first PDA in 1906. It was called the Edison Automatic Electric Calendar. It weighed close to three tons and could remember up to five appointments at once.
They've come a long ways since then...
Unknown host pong.
The Tandy PC-6 would be IMHO a good addition. I had one in junior high in the mid-80s; it spoke BASIC and assembly. Not too impressive these days, but back then a pocket calculator -- with 16K(!) of memory, and which spoke BASIC was amazing. I even wrote a crude 3D version of "Hunt the Wumpus" for it.
The On-Hand PC is also pretty cool. I bought one a while back. While it goes through CR2025 batteries like they're candy -- and two at a time -- the idea that you can program yourself a new watch when you get tired of the old one is very cool.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
This article belongs in Wikipedia.
That is all.
CSS people know that table tags are only for presenting data, not for formatting a web page. Try DIV instead.
There is a complete lack of Microsoft stuff in the article which leaves what I'd consider quite a gaping hole in the history of PDAs.
The reason is simply because when Microsoft entered the market, it was the first time a compatible desktop architecture and design had been ported across to a PDA. To a certain extent, they have also been instrumental in turning a PDA into a fully fledged, compatible and capable platform, adding Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, colour screens etc. Palm would certainly have rested on their laurels more if it wasn't for MS entering the market and we'd probably still be using black and white 2MB Palms.
It's hell to read a 100% width article on a large monitor even after blowing up the fontsize.
By "it's hell", do you mean "I have to shrink my browser window horizontally"? Those of us who like reading 100% of our screen width can't widen fixed-width pages, but a page that respects the reader's browser preferences can be as narrow as you want it to be.