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The iPad's Progenitor — 123 Years Ago

Posted by timothy on from the expensive-tic-tac-toe dept.

scurtis writes "All technology evolves from cruder predecessors, and tablets are no different. People have been playing with some of the technologies underlying tablet PCs for over a century: In July 1888, for example, inventor Elisha Gray received a US patent for an electrical stylus device that captured handwriting. According to his original application, this 'telautograph' leveraged telegraph technology to send a handwritten message between a sending and receiving station."

11 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. We used something similar at work... by pongo000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...in the mid-80's, we used a similar device to send weather observations from the air traffic control tower I worked at (FYV) to the flight service station across the field. It would literally duplicate every stroke you made on the other end. IIRC, we called it the "electrowriter."

    A few years later, they replaced it with a rebadged TI-99A that was "state of the art" for the FAA (and probably cost them thousands of dollars) where we could magically type in our ATIS report, and have them appear at the other end on a little amber monitor with attached thermal printer. High times those were!

    1. Re:We used something similar at work... by pongo000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      And I'll be damned if this isn't the very device!

  2. Isn't this more like a FAX? by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I mean, seriously, this is more like a FAX technology than a tablet PC if you ask me.

    --
    We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
    1. Re:Isn't this more like a FAX? by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except the fax was invented even earlier, 1843 by Scottish physicist Alexander Bain. It had a light-sensitive element on pendulum for sending on telegraph line, and printer for receiving.

    2. Re:Isn't this more like a FAX? by jessehager · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, Telautograph (the company that made these) was bought out by OMNIFax (which later became part of Danka). I used to fix these machines. And they were in use at least to the mid 1990's. Hospitals used them to send prescriptions from the ER to the pharmacy. This allowed a doctor to write out a prescription and have it simultaneously written out in the pharmacy in their own handwriting. The machines were pure analog and were a pain to adjust and maintain. A pair of rheostats encoded the pen position and a switch sensed when it was pressed to the paper. The signal was encoded and sent to the receiver where a pair of servo solenoids replicated the movement of the pen.

  3. Really? by guspasho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Am I the only one annoyed that it's obvious from the summary that this device is nothing even remotely like an iPad? How is this even news?

  4. Re:Lawsuit! by nitehawk214 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Till the Ark of the Covenant turns up that prior art can't be proven.

    We have top people looking into it. Top people

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  5. Seems more like the Newton's Progenitor by spagthorpe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The iPad doesn't do anything with handwriting.

    --

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
    (Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)

  6. Re:Lawsuit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pretty sure "looking into it" is what got all those people's faces melted off.

  7. I Thought... by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought that the iPad's progenitor was the Etch A Sketch.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  8. Re:Lawsuit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, he was at least a Psalm.

    Psalm Pilot.