Palm Pilot Handheld Organiser

Pilot Organisers

Pilot was the name of the first generation of personal digital assistants manufactured by Palm Computing in 1996

The first two generations of PDAs from Palm were referred to as "PalmPilots". Due to a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by the Pilot Pen Corporation, since 1998 handheld devices from Palm have been known as Palm Connected Organizers or more commonly as "Palms". "PalmPilot" has entered the vernacular as a synonym for PDAs, regardless of the brand.

The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing. The original purpose of this company was to create handwriting recognition software for other devices, named Graffiti, but their research convinced them they could create better hardware as well. Before starting development of the Pilot, Hawkins is said to have carried a block of wood, the size of the potential pilot, in his pocket for a week. Palm was widely perceived to have benefited from the notable if ill-fated earlier attempts to create a popular handheld computing platform by Go Corporation and Apple Computer.