Early Life and Career
Hawkins grew up with an inventive family on the north shore of Long Island. They developed a floating air cushion platform that was used for waterfront concerts. He attended Cornell University, where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1979. He went to work for Intel, and then moved to GRiD Systems in 1982 where he developed Rapid Application Development (RAD) software. Hawkins' interest in pattern recognition for speech and text input to computers led him to enroll in the biophysics program at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. While there he patented a "pattern classifier" for hand written text, but his PhD proposal was rejected, apparently because none of the professors there were working in that field. The setback led him back to GRiD, where, as vice president of research, he developed their pen-based computing initiative that in 1989 spawned the GRiDPad, one of the first tablet computers.
Hawkins desired to move on with the development of a smaller, hand-held device, but executives at GRiD were reluctant to take the risk. Tandy Corporation had acquired GRiD in 1988, and they were willing to support Hawkins in a new venture company. Palm Computing was founded in January, 1992. Their first product was the Zoomer, a collaboration with Palm applications, GeoWorks OS, Casio hardware, and Tandy marketing. The Apple Newton came out about the same time, late 1993, but both products failed, partly due to poor character recognition software. Hawkins responded with Graffiti, a simpler and more effective recognition product that ran on both the Zoomer and the Newton. They also developed HotSync synchronization software for Hewlett Packard devices.
Hawkins searched for partners to build a simple new handheld, but was stymied until modem manufacturer U.S. Robotics stepped in with the financial backing and manufacturing expertise to bring the Palm Pilot to market in early 1996. By the fall of 1998, US Robotics' new owner, 3Com, was hindering his plans, and Hawkins left the company along with Palm co-founders Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan to start Handspring, which debuted the Handspring Visor in September 1999. 3Com ended up spinning off Palm in March, 2000, which then merged with Handspring in August, 2003.
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