[SIGCIS-Members] Origin of the Tablet

[Brian Dear]

Interesting piece! Didn't know about this U of I student project -- cool!

One minor tidbit in the article got my attention -- dating Alan Kay's "Dynabook" being from 1968. I would suggest it dates more officially from 1972, not 1968. In '68-'69 he was working in Utah on his PhD dissertation about the FLEX machine.  In '68 he'd visited the U of I to attend an ARPA conference of grad students, and while at the U of I he'd seen a demo of the prototype of the upcoming PLATO plasma display panel (PDP), which, he once told me, was his "aha" moment, the realization that personal computing devices of the future could truly be portable as they wouldn't require lugging around a CRT. But judging from his output in '68-'69, especially his dissertation, seems to me the Dynabook concept was still a gleam in his eye and it wouldn't be until he'd arrived at Xerox PARC and settled in that he'd have time to fully flesh it out, culminating in the famous 1972 published article.

- Brian


Brian Dear
PLATO History Project
La Jolla, California 
brian at platohistory.org
www.platohistory.org
www.friendlyorangeglow.com
@platohistory





> On Dec 18, 2014, at 9:46 AM, Dag Spicer <dspicer at computerhistory.org> wrote:
> 
> A nice piece today on the CHM Blog by Assistant Curator Alex Lux.
> 
> Enjoy: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/yesterdays-tomorrows-the-origins-of-the-tablet/
> 
> Best,
> 
> Dag
> --
> Dag Spicer
> Senior Curator
> Computer History Museum
> Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
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> 
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