NeXT
Veteran Member
That's more one of the first tablets. There was a massive push for "penabled" computers in 1993 and GRiD rode that train into the sunset.
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Question - Palm PDA's
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billdeg
Technician
+1 - I agree.
The use of the term vintage is best used if you can replace with "of a particular era" ... vintage 20's car, vintage 50's movie star, vintage mid-90's PDA..etc.
billdeg
Technician
I have been told by a reliable source the first PDA's, by definition - personal digital assistant - appeared in the late 1970's lead by the Toshiba's LC-836
Along with the GO Corp G400 and the original IBM Think Pad, the GRiDPad was among the first of the tablets. Not sure the chronology between those three and if there were any other major pentablets that came before these three.
Of course there was the theoretical but never actually created Dynabook "Pad Computer" from 1976
From the People's Computer Company May 1976 newsletter:
"..We've been hearing about the Dynabook fantasy for a long time. Below are some excerpts from the recently published report on the Dynabook project, entitled "Personal Dynamic Media" by
the Learning Research Group, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. .."
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g4ugm
Veteran Member
EvanK
VCFed Founder
I have been told by a reliable source the first PDA's, by definition - personal digital assistant - appeared in the late 1970's lead by the Toshiba's LC-836
Your source must be someone very smart!
For everyone else: what's interesting about the LC-836, aka "Memo Note 30", is that it's probably the first time when organizer-like capabilities were found in a handheld electronic device. At first glimpse it's just a calculator, but it has a nifty memo-taking feature and A-Z alphanumeric keys for text entry. Radio Shack resold it as the EC-4002. Canon and Sharp soon followed with me-too devices.
These devices are very primitive but they had to start somewhere!
billdeg
Technician
I try to avoid naming names, EVAN "the source" Koblentzski - but who else?
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billdeg
Technician
when I worked at IBM they had the notepads stashed away here and there. I still have one.
What was the first device to be called PDA?
I have a thing that I bought in the mid 1980s. It didn't live to see the 1990s (my fault), but I still have it. It's called the PDA2K (because it has 2k of RAM) and it's the size and shape of three credit cards glued together (thicknesswise). I think it says Personal Data Assistant on it. I'll have to find it and take pictures.
I have a thing that I bought in the mid 1980s. It didn't live to see the 1990s (my fault), but I still have it. It's called the PDA2K (because it has 2k of RAM) and it's the size and shape of three credit cards glued together (thicknesswise). I think it says Personal Data Assistant on it. I'll have to find it and take pictures.
EvanK
VCFed Founder
Common wisdom is that Apple coined the term "PDA" with their Newton product circa 1993. I'm not saying that "common wisdom" is true, but I have not looked into earlier uses of the three-letter acronym.
I'd be interested in hearing more about the product that you mentioned, but either way it would just be a footnote in history. There were lots of PDA-esque products by the mid-1980s.
I'll see if I can find it. It certainly predates the Newton, and clearly says PDA on it. I'd be extremely surprised if it was the first.
EvanK
VCFed Founder
Well, as I said, even if it's the "first" to use the term PDA -- that means very little. Think of it this way: in the 1930s there were panel trucks, in the 1950s there were Land Cruisers, in the 1970s there were Broncos, and then in the 1990s some marketing schmo came up with the term "SUV" -- did that person/company "invent" what we now commonly call SUVs? Of course not. It's the invention itself, not the name, that matters. Handheld electronic organizers have been around since the late 1970s. Everything in PDA-land since then is just incremental.
But don't tell that to Newton-ites, who militantly insist that the 15 years of products before Newton were not "real" PDAs just because they didn't have this or this particular feature. It's ridiculous.