It was exactly ten years ago, back in March 1996, when Palm Computing (then a division of U.S. Robotics, later a division of 3Com, and finally a standalone corporation) introduced the very first Palm handhelds: the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000. Digged out from a 1996 product advertisement:
"The Pilot connected organizer is a handheld extension of your PC, rather than a miniaturized PC running a stripped-down version of a PC-style operating system. U.S. Robotics Palm Computing subsidiary engineered Pilot to leverage the capabilities already on your desktop, without forcing you to split information between a handheld and a full-size device."
Neither the Pilot 1000 nor the 5000 had an infrared port, backlight, or flash memory. RAM was limited to 128k and 512k, respectively, and both were powered by a Motorola 68328 16MHz running Palm OS V1.0!
For nostaglic sake, I uploaded some goodies for you:
- the official press release announcing the Pilot series back in January 1996
- the official 14-page product advertisement from U.S. Robotics
- two ancient demos, one for Macintosh and one for Windows (16bit!)
From all of us: A Happy Birthday, Palm Pilot!