Contrary to what you may have read in the technical press, the iPad isn’t the first tablet to have changed the world.
Floppy, bendy paper in abundance is a relatively recent luxury, but people have wanted to write things down ever since some officious human decided that people would be more likely to obey the written word than the spoken one.
Thus, it’s really no surprise that the most famous set of tablets were the Ten Commandments, which are the ancient equivalent of today’s “Keep Off the Grass” sign.
Above:
The Rosetta stone is probably the most famous non-religious tablet around. It’s a slab of granite-like granodiorite, and carries a decree by Memphis priests telling people that the new Egyptian ruler Ptolemy was sent by the gods, and was an all-around excellent chap. Like any other propaganda, the message itself is somewhat dull.
The cool thing about the Rosetta stone is that this same decree was written three times, each in a different language: ancient Egyptian, demotic script and ancient Greek. Thus the stone can be used to translate between these ancient languages, a great help to those who, unlike James Spader in Stargate, still couldn’t read Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Photo: Okko Pyykkö/Flickr
Cuneiform, invented by the Sumerians about 4,000 B.C.E., was one of the earliest forms of writing. Users pressed shapes into wet clay tablets with the wedge-shaped tip of a reed, so their markings became permanent once the clay dried — in some cases lasting thousands of years.
While this text-entry method was WYSIWYG, it was not easy to edit, as evidenced by the erased block shown in the lower left.
This tablet is in the collection of the British Museum in London.
Photo: Charles Tilford/Flickr
Slate, the name that the credulous Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer tried to steal from Apple before the iPad was released last year, has existed for a lot longer than the modern tablet computer.
A metamorphic rock that is most commonly seen on roofs, slate either flakes naturally or is easily split into flat, tile-like slabs, ideal for waterproofing buildings.
Because of its flatness, it was used in schools for blackboards, and also as individual panels for the kids to write on with chalk, and this is where the modern use of the word has come from.
And if you have ever gotten drunk, taken a wild shot at the pool table and ripped the baize with your cue, the flat gray slab revealed by your clumsy action was also slate.
Photo: Dominic Alves/Flickr
Wax tablets were used by ancient Greeks and Romans, and on through the middle ages. They consist of a piece of wood covered with wax. Letters were formed by dragging a stylus somewhat laboriously through the wax, and could be erased by pressing with a flat implement.
The whole sheet could be erased by heating it enough to make the wax melt and flow back to a clean slate, so like an iPad, you probably didn’t want to leave one of these lying in the sun.
Photo: girlinblack/Flickr
When Hamlet finds out that his uncle has killed his father, he mutters something about “wiping records” from “the table of my memory.” This “table” was likely a Shakespearean PDA, a small notebook containing blocks of plaster. A metal pen was used to write on these “pages,” and they could be wiped clean when needed.
The “tables” may also have been ass-skin pages, coated to be erasable with moisture. Either way, reusable paper was an essential alternative to expensive real paper at the time.
It seems somehow appropriate that Hamlet, a most businesslike character, was using an early form of the personal organizer.
Photo courtesy ofSarah Werner, Wynken de Worde
The word slate, as used to refer to computing devices, came into use just as rumors about the then non-existent iPad were getting crazy. Nobody knew what the iPad would look like, let alone what it would be called. Slate, iTablet and iBook were the best guesses, and they all turned out to be wrong.
That didn’t stop 2010's CES being dominated by the still-unannounced iPad’s shadow. Dell and Microsoft both showed off “slates,” but these mysteriously disappeared when it became clear just how lame they were compared to Apple’s new device when it finally appeared.
It is now a year later and, while Android-based tablets are showing steady improvement, nobody has yet managed to come close to the iPad’s sales volumes.
thanks to:
Charlie Sorrel http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/gallery-ancient-slates/?pid=1636&viewall=true
Appassionato di informatica e telefonia, ma anche di enogastronomia siciliana e palermitana, in cerca di novità e chicche in giro sul web. 
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