In my previous blog I referred to the Psion series 3. The earlier Psion Organiser (Organiser not Organizer, as it was the name given by the British company Psion in the 1980s) is considered to be the first PDA , according to this Wikipedia article.

From the same article, “the term ‘PDA’ was first used on January 7, 1992 by Apple Computer CEO John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton.” By then Psion had already released the first of the Psion 3 range of personal digital assistants, which featured a QWERTY keyboard and a database, a word processor, a spreadsheet with charts, world times and more. Unlike the Newton, the Psion series 3 was a clamshell device.

Jumping ahead a few years, Microsoft also had a Clamshell PDA, the Handheld PC. It was not called a PDA because it could not actually fit in a pocket. Wikipedia says of the Handheld PC:
“A Handheld PC, or H/PC for short, is a term for a computer built around a form factor which is smaller than any standard laptop computer.”

Several of these devices are still in use today, and I found this one for sale on Pricegrabber – the HP (Hewlett-Packard) Jornada 720 PDA. Among its specs is this gem: Microsoft Office (including Access database).

Posted on May 21st, 2008 by mervyn