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Tablets and Slates Before the iPad

1. Cuneiform Tablets

Cuneiform, invented by the Sumerians about 4,000 B.C.E., was one of the earliest forms of writing. Users pressed shapes into wet clay tablets with the wedge-shaped tip of a reed, so their markings became permanent once the clay dried — in some cases lasting thousands of years.

While this text-entry method was WYSIWYG, it was not easy to edit, as evidenced by the erased block shown in the lower left.

This tablet is in the collection of the British Museum in London.

Photo: Charles Tilford/Flickr

2.  Hamlet’s Tables

When Hamlet finds out that his uncle has killed his father, he mutters something about “wiping records” from “the table of my memory.” This “table” was likely a Shakespearean PDA, a small notebook containing blocks of plaster. A metal pen was used to write on these “pages,” and they could be wiped clean when needed.

The “tables” may also have been ass-skin pages, coated to be erasable with moisture. Either way, reusable paper was an essential alternative to expensive real paper at the time.

It seems somehow appropriate that Hamlet, a most businesslike character, was using an early form of the personal organizer.

Photo courtesy ofSarah Werner, Wynken de Worde

, Folger Shakespeare library