How did this all start?

Today, when we have already got used to smartphones and when there appear more and more new tablet computers, some people may no longer remember such wonderful portable devices as palmtops. But that were them that made a good start of all this evolution.

In just about a quarter of a century PDAs completed the full cycle from rising to fading.

As early as in 1982 there were first introduced some organizers by Tandy, Hewlett-Packard and Sharp. But the true progenitor of all PDAs was the device called Organizer I designed by the British company Psion in 1984. This company was the first to stake on the production of handhelds, though at that time they resembled just kind of smart calculators. Organizer I was followed by Organizer II in 1986. By 1989 these primitive devices had evolved into full-blown portable computers. The new series of Psion gadgets was called МС and included models МС 200, МС 400, МС 600 and МС Word. These handhelds were of quite considerable size and had a full physical keyboard and a cover. The same year there appeared a more consummate and successful device – Atari Portfolio, resembling a compressed variant of a laptop. It enjoyed wide popularity and was produced until 1993. By the time Atari took its Portfolio out of production, other manufacturers had livened up. In 1991 Psion launched its Psion Series 3, and in 1992 Apple introduced its first PDA with a touchscreen and a stylus – Apple Newton NotePad.  Since then a PDA is inconceivable without a touchscreen.

But the true public love and popularity PDAs acquired only in 1996 when Palm Computing launched its first line of handhelds running Palm OS, called PalmPilot. Though Apple Computer and Go Corporation had already tried before to create an ideal electronic organizer, it was Palm who fulfilled this project successfully. Palm Computing created a handy and useful gadget mediate between a mobile phone and a laptop. The popularity of Palm handhelds was so all-embracing that soon the name ‘Palm’ became the synonym of a palmtop computer.