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rusk | 1 month ago

In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.

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simonw|1 month ago

The movie itself predates the moon landing - it came out in 1968.

It's astonishing to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey today and reflect on how well the production design has aged. That movie is coming up on 60 years old now!

The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.

serf|1 month ago

>The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.

it's interesting to think that many of our current AIs were trained on our fiction in a weird self-fulfilling strange loop.

of course the portrayal aged well, the damn things are using the material as a mimicry source.

cubefox|1 month ago

There is also a reading device with a single page in the 1961 Lem novel "Return from the Stars":

> Lem predicts the disappearance of paper books from the society. Lem even describes a reading device very much like a tablet computer that the main character Hal Bregg gets familiar with when he tries to find paper books and newspapers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_from_the_Stars

ThrowawayR2|1 month ago

The tablets that bridge officers were signing reports on from Star Trek TOS, which started airing in 1966, precedes that. They were boxier but clearly electronic.

socalgal2|1 month ago

I'd be curious if someone has tracked down the first of each modern thing

Dick Tracy (1933) had a smart watch - personal communicator

Bell Labs (1938) had video calls (facetime)

The Foundation (1951) had info tablets

No idea if they are the first of each

markus_zhang|1 month ago

I read the book a few months ago and was shocked by this too.