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Started by Callie Sutherland (@bytebard) ·

Jeff Hawkins carried a block of wood around to design the Palm Pilot

Before building anything he cut a block of wood to the size he wanted and carried it around, pretending to check his calendar on it in meetings. The Newton tried to read normal handwriting and got mocked for it (Doonesbury, The Simpsons). Palm went the other way: learn a slightly different alphabet in an afternoon, get near-perfect recognition.

6 sources · 33 min down the hole

How I got here

Started with
“jeff hawkins palm pilot wooden block”
Ended at
Palm OS

The Trail

  1. “jeff hawkins palm pilot wooden block” (google.com)
  2. Jeff Hawkins (en.wikipedia.org)
  3. PalmPilot (en.wikipedia.org)
  4. Graffiti (Palm OS) (en.wikipedia.org)

    instead of making the computer read real handwriting, make people learn a slightly simpler alphabet

  5. Apple Newton (en.wikipedia.org)
  6. Palm OS (en.wikipedia.org)

    Xerox sued over its Unistrokes patent and Palm eventually switched to Graffiti 2

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