Tablet Pc

Tablet PC

Running head: TABLET PC

Tablet PC

Steven M. Weidler; Blaine Bostelman; Tonya Culbreath; Brent Gipson

Piedmont College

Tablet PC

Abstract

Tablet PC

Tablet PC

History

Tablets as we recognize them today have their beginnings in the 1950's-1960's. In 1964 the

Rand tablet one of the earliest tablet computers was developed and sold for $18,000. It had an

attached stylus that sensed electronic pulses through a fine grid of conductors. The 1970's and

1980's saw the development of several stylus based devices that quickly became obsolete

because they were not user friendly, and expensive. (Smith, 2010) The first viable portable

tablet computer was developed in 1989 and was called the "grid pad." It was designed to assist

people out in the field to collect data. It arrived on the scene and was gone with in five years.

The early nineties also saw the first PDA, Windows pen computing, and Apple's message pad.

In 1993 Fujitsu released the first pen tablet for use on a local area network. That year the world

leaders at the G7 summit were all given one of these Fugitsu tablets for use at the Halifax

meeting. Pen computing didn't seem to catch on and by 1995 it was dying rapidly.

(Blickenstorfer, 2005) After a few quiet years on the tablet front in 2001 Bill Gates introduced

Microsoft's newest device and coined the name "tablet PC." He predicted that within 5 years the

tablet PC would be the most popular computer device sold in the United States. This technology

layed the groundwork for what tablet PCs are today. (Hancock, 2002) While those in the

medical and business community saw use for these tablets there was very little interest by the

general public. Microsoft was ahead of its time by almost a decade in theory, however poor

software design and hardware that was not built from the ground up caused these devices to

never really become popular for