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A Quick Look at the Firsts of Palm Pilots
By Darrin Ngo
There was once a time when items like mobile phones and personal digital assistants were only seen on TV, particularly on Star Trek, the one starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. This was about 30 or so years ago. These days, with the fast ever changing realm which technology develops and thrives in, we on longer have to wait for an episode of Star Trek to see these communication devices up and about, as in almost every avenue we turn, we see them being used by people of all ages and all genders.
One of the most prevalent of hand held gadgets which are quite common sights to see nowadays would be the palm pilot. Technically, the term refers to Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs in short. Palm Pilots have somewhat become "household names" or "definitive" names when talking about personal digital assistants, as Palm Pilots are actually a class of products in themselves, with Palm being the brand name, and Pilot being the series range of the first generation of Palm's products. The name simply stuck, and has become the buzzword, as how "googling" something is now congruent when saying to search for something.
The series was the first generation of personal digital assistants which came out of production from Palm Computing, and the term has since
then become the vernacular for personal digital assistants. The first was seen in 1996, and back then, Palm Computing was a division of U.S. Robotics.
Donna Dubinsky, Ed Colligan and Jeff Hawkins are known to be the inventors of the Palm Pilot, as well as the founders of Palm Computing. Originally, the company's intention was that of producing a handwriting recognition software for the successful operation of other devices. From humble beginning, the eventually came to be, standing tall in being one of the most ground breaking of personal digital assistant brands in the world.
The first Palm Pilots were the Pilot 1000 and the Pilot 5000. Comparing these two with the palm pilots rampant today, one could actually see just how different things were during the birth of the Palm Pilot. The Pilot 1000 and the Pilot 5000 had a respective 128 kilobyte and 512 kilobyte memory capacity, and didn't come with backlight features, or infrared capabilities, but did have serial communication capacities via a serial communications port. These days Palm Pilots are known to boast memory storage capacities reaching up to 2 gigabyte capacities, out-storing the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000's respective memory storage capacities.
Indeed the first of palm pilots were truly the most base of palm pilots.
My background is in information technology. I have been particularly interested the palm pilot when it made its big debut in 2000.
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