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3100 BCE
Cuneiform
This clay tablet was discovered in in the rich Mesopotamian city of Uruk (modern day southern Iraq) and was created around 5,000 years ago (3100 - 3000 BC). It displays some of the earliest writing discovered in the world. -
1750 BCE
Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir
The complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir (UET V 81) is a clay tablet that was sent to the ancient city-state Ur, written c. 1750 BCE. It is a complaint to a merchant named Ea-nāṣir from a customer named Nanni. Written in Akkadian cuneiform, it may be the oldest known written customer complaint. It is currently kept in the British Museum. In 2015, the tablet's content and Ea-nāṣir in particular gained popularity as an online meme. -
1440 BCE
Tablets of Stone- The Ten Commandments
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tablets of the Law were the two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments when Moses ascended Mount Sinai as written in the Book of Exodus. -
1180 BCE
PY Ta 641
PY Ta 641, sometimes known as the Tripod Tablet, is a Mycenaean clay tablet inscribed in Linear B, currently displayed in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Discovered in the so-called "Archives Complex" of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Messenia in June 1952 by the American archaeologist Carl Blegen, it has been described as "probably the most famous tablet of Linear B". -
196 BCE
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences across the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts. -
164 BCE
Babylonian observation of Halley's comet
Babylonian astronomical diaries recorded daily observations of the moon and planets from the 7th century onwards. The diaries for 164-163 BC contain observations of Halley's comet at its first and last visibility. This observation can be dated to about 22-28 September 164. -
500
Mayan Engraved Tablet
Maya hieroglyphs were first identified as a writing system during the nineteenth century, when the bar-and-dot numerical system was deciphered. In the 1950s it was discovered that the script combined signs representing whole words with signs representing syllables. Certain glyphs were recognized as naming specific people and cities (known as Name Glyphs and Emblem Glyphs respectively). -
Telautograph
The first electronic handwriting device was the Telautograph, patented by Elisha Gray in 1888. -
Controller
What is probably the first patent for a system that recognized handwritten characters by analyzing the handwriting motion was granted in 1915. -
Telautograph System
U.S. Patent on touchscreen for handwriting input. -
Memex
Memex is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think". Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of their books, records, and communications, -
Stylator
The first graphic tablet resembling contemporary tablets and used for handwriting recognition by a computer was the Stylator in 1957. Better known (and often misstated as the first digitizer tablet) is the RAND Tablet] also known as the Grafacon (for Graphic Converter), introduced in 1964. The RAND Tablet employed a grid of wires under the surface of the pad that encoded horizontal and vertical coordinates in a small electrostatic signal. -
RAND Tablet
The RAND Tablet is a graphical computer input device developed by The RAND Corporation. The RAND Tablet is claimed to be the first digital graphic device marketed as being a low cost device. The creation of the tablet was performed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The RAND Tablet was one of the first devices to utilize a stylus as a highly practical instrument. -
Dynabook
The KiddiComp concept, envisioned by Alan Kay in 1968 while a PhD candidate, and later developed and described as the Dynabook in his 1972 proposal "A personal computer for children of all ages",