iPhone History

Development of the iPhone began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' direction that Apple engineers investigate touchscreens. Apple created the device during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with AT&T Mobility—Cingular Wireless at the time—at an estimated development cost of US$150 million over thirty months. Apple rejected the "design by committee" approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house. Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007 at Macworld 2007. Apple was required...

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Camcorder History

Video cameras originally designed for television broadcast were large and heavy, mounted on special pedestals, and wired to remote recorders located in separate rooms. As technology advanced, out-of-studio video recording was made possible by means of compact video cameras and portable video recorders. The recording unit could be detached from the camera and carried to a shooting location. While the camera itself could be quite compact, the fact that a separate recorder had to be carried along made on-location shooting a two-man job. Specialized video cassette recorders were introduced by both JVC (VHS) and Sony (U-matic and Betamax) to be used...

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Camera History

The forerunner to the camera was the camera obscura. It was a dark chamber (in Latin, a camera obscura, demonstrating the etymology), "consist[ing] of a darkened chamber or box, into which light is admitted through a pinhole (later a convex lens), forming an image of external objects on a surface of paper or glass, etc., placed at the focus of the lens". In the 6th century, Greek mathematician and architect Anthemius of Tralles used a type of camera obscura in his experiments. The camera obscura was described by the Arabic scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) in his Book of Optics (1015–1021). Scientist-monk Roger Bacon also studied the matter....

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Smartphone History

Early years The first smartphone was called Simon; it was designed by IBM in 1992 and shown as a concept product that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to select telephone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with a unique on-screen "predictive" keyboard. By today's...

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Cell Phone History

Radiophones have a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links and civil services in the 1950s. The first mobile telephone call made from a car occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on June 17, 1946, using the Bell System's Mobile Telephone Service, but the system was impractical from what is considered a portable handset today. The equipment weighed 80 lbs, and the AT&T service, basically a massive party line, cost $30 USD per month (equal to $337.33 today) plus 30 to 40 cents per local call,...

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Laptop Computer History

A laptop (also known as a notebook) is a personal computer designed for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device (a touch pad, also known as a track pad, and/or a pointing stick) and speakers into a single unit. A laptop is powered by mains electricity via an AC adapter, and can be used away from an outlet using a rechargeable battery. A laptop battery in new condition typically stores enough energy to run the laptop for three to five hours, depending on the computer usage, configuration and power management settings. When the laptop is plugged into...

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Desktop Computer History

A desktop computer is a personal computer (PC) in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer. Prior to the widespread use of microprocessors, a computer that could fit on a desk was considered remarkably small. Desktop computers come in a variety of types ranging from large vertical tower cases to small form factor models that can be tucked behind an LCD monitor. "Desktop" can also indicate a horizontally-oriented computer case usually intended to have the display screen placed on top to save space on the desktop. Most modern desktop computers have separate screens and keyboards....

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