History of Tablet PC

You may think that Tablet PC history is started from this decade only. It is natural since Tablet PC is globally known since Apple offered its Tablet PC, iPad. However, truly, Tablet PC history has started from a long time ago – from 1888 exactly. At the first, Tablet PC is only an electric stylus that capture the handwriting. U.S. Patent record tell us that the first electric stylus is created by Elisa Gray in 1888.

The next evolution was in year 1945 when Vannevar Bush offered the memex as archiving as well as handwriting capturing tool. Memex was known as tool that offered “As we may think” slogan which means that it can record our thought directly. Next in year 1982, Pencept of Waltram, Massachusetts offered general purpose computer with handwriting capturing (without mouse and keyboard).

And then, a cadre system offers point-of-sale inforite with handwriting capturing and a tiny electric pen. Both of them can has been able to called as Tablet PC. In 1985, Pencept and CIC offered computer without keyboard and mouse but with handwriting capturing as input. The operating system was MS-DOS. In 1993, Fujitsu offered Poqet Pen Tablet PC which already completed with Wireless LAN feature.

Then, Apple Computer offered Newton PDA – also known as Apple MessagePad – which includes handwriting capturing with stylus. After that, IBM start to compete in Tablet PC business with its ThinkPad. ThinkPad is the first real portable Table computer in my opinion. Still in the same year, AT&T offered EO Personal Communicator which combines PenPoint with wireless communication. Then, BellSouth offered IBM Simon Personal Communicator.

IBM Simon Personal Comminactor is a analog cell phone which equipped with touch screen. There was no handwriting capturing in it but it has the PDA and Email feature. Started in 2000 and released in 2001, the Tablet PC had started to captured world awareness with Microsoft’s Tablet PC prototype which announced by Bill Gates. This Tablet PC had been known as Pen Computer which equipped with Windows XP OS.

After a long silent, finally, in 2009 and 2010, ASUS announced its Netbook Tablet EEE PC T91 and T91MT which completed with multi-touch screen feature. In the same year, Always Innovation announced new netbook tablet which equipped with ARM CPU while Motion Computer offered J3400 Tablet Computer. In year 2010, there are various Tablet PC that announced such as T7000 Tablet (powered by Microsoft Windows OS), Apple iPad (powered by Apple iOS), Samsung Galaxy Tab (Powered by Android OS), and bModo 12 (powered by Windows 7 OS).

And then, in this year (2011), Tablet PC business is in next level after there are so many gadget related vendors offers their new Tablet PC such as Motorola XOOM (with Android 3.0 OS), EEE Slate EP121 (with Windows 7 OS), EEE Pad Transformer, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 inch (with Android 3.0 OS), Apple iPad 2 (with Apple lOS), BlackBerry Playbook (with BlackBerry Tablet OS), Dell Streak 7 inch/10 inch (with Android 3.0 OS), and many more.