History of PDAs

[Bob Russell]

A very nice history of PDAs by Evan Koblentzcan be found here.

The purpose of this document is to be a comprehensive timeline of the history of PDAs. Specifically, my intention is to clarify which companies premiered each of the primary front-end features that are considered standard in modern devices, as of the mid/late-1990s commoditization trend. So this is not a discussion of back-end technologies such as architectures, chips, programming interfaces, and speeds. By "premiered" I mean "first to actually include the technology in a relevant product," not necessarily the actual inventors of each technology. For example, it is almost impossible to know who invented the first miniature keyboard; similarly the invention of handwriting recognition technology goes back several decades. But we can say with near certainty which were the first handheld devices to include these technologies. It is the gathering of all these first-of-breed offerings that together created modern handhelds.

This research is an ongoing project of mine that began in 2001...