1964 — Designed without a keyboard, the 10 by 10-inch RAND Tablet let computer users choose menu options, draw diagrams and even write software using only a digital stylus. It cost about $18,000 (~$130,000 today), so its use was very limited.
1979 — The Graphics Tablet for the Apple II was the first tablet released for the home market. It wasn’t a hit, however, because of its $650 price tag (~$2,000 today). It didn’t help that the tablet wasn’t FCC-compliant, after the Commission found that it interfered with television signals.
1984 — One of the first successful consumer tablets was the KoalaPad, which let kids draw on the family’s home computer with a stylus or their fingers, for a reasonable $195 investment (~$425 today).
As computers shrunk from a whole room to just the desktop, the next step for power users was to take the computer into the wild. Portability was hot in the 1980s, and that trend hasn’t changed, as the iPad has become the go-to device for on-the-go computing.
1981 — With its integrated 5-inch monochrome monitor and full-sized keyboard, two 5.25-inch floppy drives and optional 300 baud modem, the Osborne 1 Portable Computer was a virtual roving office. Plus, at a price of $1795 (~$4,200 today), along with $1,500 worth of included software, it was a steal. Of course at 25 pounds, its portability is debatable.
1982 — The first true laptop, the Epson HX-20, was about the size of a sheet of paper and weighed only a few pounds. It was packed with great features, 16K of RAM, an LCD screen, a full-sized keyboard, a tiny calculator-style printer, a micro-cassette drive and rechargeable batteries. Although underpowered for the day, the $800 base price (~$1,800 today) made the sacrifice worth it for portability.
1989 — With the Atari Portfolio, the first PC-compatible palmtop computer, users could track contacts with the address book, create spreadsheets and write documents, for only $400 (~$700 today). Featuring 128K of RAM, a high-contrast LCD screen, up to 4MB of storage and powered for six weeks by regular AA batteries, it was a useful PC the size of a VHS tape.
