The Tablet Computer: The Idea of a Machine (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)

A history of the ideas behind a device we thought would change everything. Tablet computers appear commonplace today, yet for decades they represented an ambitious-and often unrealized-vision of personal computing.The Tablet Computer traces the long history of this idea, from early conceptual designs in the 1970s to the consumer devices of the twenty-first century.Elizabeth R. Petrick examines the tablet as a shifting concept shaped by expectations about learning, productivity, accessibility, and human-computer interaction. Across multiple generations of failed prototypes, partial successes, and rebranded technologies, developers imagined tablets as book-sized, portable, networked computers operated through touch.These visions promised to transform education, support workers of various kinds, and redefine how humans interact with machines-promises that were repeatedly revised or deferred.Approaching the subject through intellectual history, Petrick follows how engineers, designers, cor