The Dynabook was a conceptual system proposed by Xerox PARC in 1968. The ideas behind it led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which embodied all the elements of a graphical user interface, or GUI, as early as 1972. The software component of this research was Smalltalk, which went on to have a life of its own independent of the Dynabook concept.
The Dynabook concept described what is now known as a laptop computer or, (in some of its other incarnations) a tablet PC or slate computer with nearly eternal battery life and software aimed mostly at giving children access to digital media. Adults could also have used a Dynabook, but the target audience would be children.
Alan Kay was the main proponent of the Dynabook concept. When Microsoft came up with its tablet PC he was quoted as saying "Microsoft's Tablet PC, the first Dynabook-like computer good enough to criticize," a comment he had earlier applied to the Apple Macintosh.
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