It’s iPad day! And if Apple (and all first ten reviews) are right, then this day will change the way you look at a computing device. Of course, the idea of a tablet isn’t entirely new. In fact, the first idea of what could be viewed as a tablet dates back 42 years. Over time, we have seen tablets come and go, each one making critical mistakes that kept them from establishing a true class of new computing device. Here are our ten most memorable candidates.

This list can’t start, obviously, without mentioning the first webpad. As far as we know, the Dynabook was the first real-world vision of a tablet-like computing device. It was imagined in 1968 by Alan Kay. Kay, a computer scientist and Turing Award winner, was one of the first members of Xerox’ legendary PARC and later a Senior Fellow at HP Labs. He is best known for architecting the graphical user interface, one of the inventors of object-oriented programming as well as the expression “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

The Dynabook was first shown in 1972 in a research paper and was designed to be a touchscreen computer for everyone. The paper described the Dynabook as a device with virtually eternal battery life and a way to give anyone access to digital media. If you think about it, it is fascinating to see how close Kay’s idea was to Apple’s iPad – 42 years ago. Interestingly, Kay, who is actively involved in the OLPC project, still claims that the Dynabook has not been invented yet.

Let’s jump to the not so great version of the webpad. We’ll start with the Nokia N770 on the next page.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.