10 Forgotten Historical Figures You Didn't Know Changed Your Life
7. Francis James Canova Jr: The Smart Phone
Smartphones have become a staple of life, specifically in the developed world: the ability to not only obtain a ridiculous amount of information but to spread it across the world, all at your finger tips.
You may assume that the iPhone brought on the smartphone revolution. Indeed it did much to progress the technology, but it wasn't the first time we had an all-in-one device.
Francis Canova, an IBM engineer, created the Simon Personal Communicator – named for the game Simon Says, marketed with the tagline 'Simon Says Simplicity' – in 1993.
Simon worked as a phone, fax, pager and computer, with a touchscreen, clock, calculator, email capability and a game involving moving blocks around (but not Tetris, for legal reasons). Simon even had predictive text and a touchscreen.
Simon did have an issue with short battery life (to be fair we haven't cracked that problem yet) and retailed in 1994 at an obscene $899, about $1,500 in today's money.
Future models were planned, but due to Canova and many of the other Simon engineers leaving IBM amid several restructures of the company, none of them were produced.
Simon wasn't a huge commercial success, but it did push tech companies to consider the possibilities inherent in cellular technology and multi-purpose phones.