The EO is an early commercial

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...

that was created by Eo Inc. (later acquired by

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to busi ...

), and released in April 1993. Eo (Latin for "I go") was the hardware spin-out of

GO Corporation GO Corporation was a company founded in 1987 to create pen-based portable computers, and a pen-based operating system and software. It was a pioneer of pen-based computing and was one of the most well-funded start-up companies of its time. I ...

. Officially named the AT&T EO Personal Communicator, it is similar to a large

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...

with

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information (''telecommunication'') between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided transm ...

communications, and competed against the

Apple Newton The Newton is a specified standard and series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Computer, Inc. from 1993 to 1998. An early device in the PDA categorythe term itself originating with the Newtonit w ...

. The unit was produced in conjunction with David Kelley Design,

frog design frog (styled as ''"frog, part of Capgemini Invent"'') is a global creative and design consultancy founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger in Mutlangen, Germany, where it was initially named “esslinger design”. Soon after the ...

, and the Matsushita,

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been owned b ...

and

Marubeni (, OSE: 8002, NSE: 8002) is a '' sōgō shōsha'' (general trading company) headquartered in Otemachi, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the largest ''sogo shosha'' and has leading market shares in cereal and paper pulp trading as wel ...

corporations. Among the EO customers AT&T claimed were:

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

Andersen Consulting Accenture plc is a global multinational professional services company originating in the United States and headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, that specializes in information technology (IT) services and management consulting. It was founded in 19 ...

, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories,

FD Titus & Sons FD or similar may refer to: Science and technology *Canon FD lens mount, a standard for connecting a lens to a camera *Familial dysautonomia, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system *Fermi–Dirac statistics (F–D statistics), in quantum s ...

and Woolworths. Eo, Inc., 52 percent owned by AT&T, shut down operations on July 29, 1994, after failing to meet its revenue targets and to secure the funding to continue. It was reported that 10,000 of the computers had been sold. In 2012, PC Magazine called the AT&T EO 440, "the first true

phablet A phablet (, ) is a mobile device combining or straddling the size formats of smartphones and tablets. The word is a blend word of ''phone'' and ''tablet''. The term was largely unused by the late 2010s, since average phone sizes eventually morph ...

Product specifics

Two models, the Communicator 440 and 880, were produced and measure about the size of a small clipboard. Both are powered by the

AT&T Hobbit The AT&T Hobbit is a microprocessor design developed by AT&T Corporation in the early 1990s. It was based on the company's CRISP (C-language Reduced Instruction Set Processor) design resembling the classic RISC pipeline, and which in turn grew ou ...

chip, created by AT&T specifically for running code written in the

C programming language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...

. They feature I/O ports such as modem, parallel, serial,

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...

out and

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

. The devices come with a

cellular network A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless network, wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called ''cells'', each served by at least one fixed-locatio ...

modem The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...

, a built-in microphone with speaker, and a free subscription to AT&T EasyLink Mail for both

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

and

e-mail Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

messages. The

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

PenPoint OS The PenPoint OS was one of the earliest operating systems written specifically for graphical tablets and personal digital assistants. It was a product of GO Corporation. PenPoint OS ran on a number of Intel x86-powered tablet PCs including IBM ...

, was created by GO Corporation. Widely praised for its simplicity and ease of use, the OS did not gain widespread use. The applications suite, Perspective, was licensed to EO by Pensoft.

Notes

External links

* *
The EO 440 And EO 880
(subscription required) * EO 440 receives one o

Computer-related introductions in 1993 AT&T computers Personal digital assistants Tablet computers {{compu-mobile-stub

Product specifics

See also

Notes

External links