Twenty years ago, on 16 August 1994, the Bellsouth IBM Simon hit the American market. Weighing in at a hefty half a kilogram, and looking rather like a grey brick, the Simon was advertised with a not-so-snappy slogan declaring it to be “The World’s First Cellular Communicator”.
Although the slogan was a bit of a mouthful, the Simon really did break new ground. It took some of the best technology that the handheld computing world had to offer – personal digital assistants (PDAs) were all the rage in the early 1990s – and combined it with a mobile phone.
This blog post was written for the Science Museum’s blog. To read the full blog post click here.