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 comput ...

that was created by Eo, Inc. (later acquired by

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...

), and released in April 1993. Eo (Latin for "I go") is the hardware spin-out of GO. Officially named the AT&T EO Personal Communicator, it is similar to a large

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in part ...

with

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

communications, and competed against the

Apple Newton The Newton is a series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed and marketed by Apple Computer, Inc. An early device in the PDA category (the Newton originated the term), it was the first to feature handwriting recognition. Apple started ...

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

and

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

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 of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

Andersen Consulting Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accen ...

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

, FD Titus & Sons and

Woolworths Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to: Businesses * F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores * Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...

. 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 portmanteau of ''phone'' and ''tablet''. Phablets feature large displays that complement screen-intensive activity such as mo ...

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 that AT&T Corporation developed in the early 1990s. It was based on the company's CRISP (C-language Reduced Instruction Set Processor) design, which in turn grew out of the C Machine design by Bell Labs o ...

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

C programming language ''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well as ...

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

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

. The devices come with a

cellular network A cellular network or mobile network is a communication network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless. The network is distributed over land areas called "cells", each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver (typically th ...

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...

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

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

messages. The

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

PenPoint OS The PenPoint OS was a product of GO Corporation and was one of the earliest operating systems written specifically for graphical tablets and personal digital assistants. It ran on AT&T Corporation's EO Personal Communicator as well as a number ...

, was created by

GO Corporation GO Corporation was founded in 1987 to create portable computers, an operating system, and software with a pen-based user interface. It was famous not only for its pioneering work in Pen-based computing but as well as being one of the most well- ...

. 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