iPad / tablet PC in the film '2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY' (1968)
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> One document sent from Tony Masters to Roger Caras on June 29 listed matter-of-factly—under a letterhead replete with the roaring MGM lion—nine props that he asked Caras to help him with. Number one was “2001 newspaper to be read on some kind of television screen. Should be designed television screen shape; i.e., wider than it is high.”
> Within a week or so, Caras had indeed made an agreement with the New York Times permitting use of its logotype in a mocked-up electronic edition of its front page. If it had made it into the film, it would have been read by an astronaut on the iPad-type tablet computers seen on board Discovery. And had Kubrick followed through and actually presented the newspaper in this way, there’s no doubt that 2001: A Space Odyssey would be remembered today as an important harbinger of the internet. Instead, the director elected to use only a TV transmission, seemingly from the BBC, on the portable tablets.
> As a logical spin-off of the tablet computer concept, a sheaf of production notes written in December 1965—immediately prior to the start of live-action shooting—contained an offhanded description of a sight so common today that it’s hard even to remember when it wasn’t ubiquitous in the world. “A rig should be made for the newspad, so that if one is looking straight at it over a man’s shoulder when he is reading, we can illuminate a fixed transparency of one page of a book,” Ordway wrote. “On the reverse shot, we will have to place a small light on the hidden face side of the newspad, so that a little light can be shining on his face.”
Also noticed that Knight Rider and ST-TNG computers are not as impressive looking as they once were. ;-)