In Pictures: Pocket marvels - 40 years of handheld computers

From the first pocket scientific calculator through '80s organisers to today's tablets, check out 15 ingenious devices that have driven the handheld computing revolution.

1989: Poqet PC

The late 1980s were an era when businesses still talked about being IBM-compatible, so it was inevitable that some handheld pioneers would incorporate MS-DOS and run essential software like Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. The $2,000 Poqet PC did just that.

Packing a whopping 640K of RAM and expandable storage into a one-pound clamshell computer the size of a VHS tape, the Poqet PC was a subnotebook designed to be held in one hand and typed on with the other. It even packed communications features -- you could access dial-up online services with it through an RS232 port. And the Poqet PC did what most modern handhelds don't: started up instantly and lasted for 50 hours on a pair of AA batteries.

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