Is there an iPad

Answer 1

They had plenty of technologies during the American Revolution, many thousands of them infact. But the most advanced were things like: the pipe organ, the mechanical marine chronometer, large wooden ships with sails, single shot muzzle loaded rifles and muskets (the breach loading rifle had just been invented and saw some use by the colonial troops but when its inventor was killed in battle the invention died too), etc. But the explosion of technological development leading to what we have today did not begin until the Industrial Revolution in the 1820s to 1830s.

1. The earliest electronics technology was the Marconi Radio Telegraph, introduced in the 1890s. However it really had practically nothing electronic in it, basically just two spark gaps connected to long antenna wires: one for transmitting and one for receiving. When a high voltage electrical circuit made the transmitting spark gap arc, the receiving spark gap arced too even when thousands of miles from the transmitter.
2. The first "true electronics" technology used primitive diode and triode vacuum tubes invented in 1904 and 1907 respectively.
3. Digital computers were invented in the middle 1930s by several people independently. but the first electronic digital computers were not built until 1942 through 1945. They used vacuum tubes were mostly very large, very heavy, used large amounts of electricity. very expensive, had insignificant amounts of memory (e.g. 10 to 40 words total), some were not programmable and the ones that were programmable typically needed dozens of cables to be rewired and hundreds of switches to be set all manually.
4. Fully programmable electronic digital computers with reasonable amounts of memory (e.g. 1000 words) permitting loading both the program and data automatically into that memory did not appear until 1952 (e.g. UNIVAC).
5. Discrete transistors were not used in computers until until the late 1950s (because earlier transistors generally did not work above audio frequencies (i.e. 20Hz to 20000Hz) and both computers and radios needed transistors that would work above 1MHz). These computers were smaller, lighter, used less electricity, but were still very expensive.
6. Integrated Circuits were first used in computers in 1964 (e.g. Minuteman Missile guidance computer, IBM System 360), however these devices initially cost far more per transistor than did individual discrete transistors did, the main advantage was they reduced the size and weight of the computer. For example an Integrated Circuit containing 10 transistors might cost about $1000, but 10 discrete transistors similar the one in the Integrated Circuit might cost $20 each or $200 plus about $50 for the rest of the components, making the Integrated Circuit four times as expensive as the Discrete component circuit.
7. In 1971 Intel broke both the computer memory barrier (with the 4K bit DRAM IC) and the processor size barrier (with the 4004 Microprocessor IC). While these specific Integrated Circuits were still expensive and had little real capacity they lead to modern inexpensive Microcomputers, Laptops, Tablets, Cellphones, etc. with gigabytes of memory and speeds of billions of instructions per second (figures that could have never been seriously imagined in the 1950s or 1960s).
8. In 1971 Motorola developed the first handheld Cellphone. It was about the size and weight of a brick and the battery could only operate it for a couple hours before it had to be recharged. The Cellphone announced by A. T. & T. the year earlier needed to be installed in the trunk of your car by a Phone Company Technician and occupied a couple of cubic feet of the trunk.

I graduated from High School in 1975 and had to use a Slide Rule throughout school (I still have it!). I asked my parents for a 12 function scientific RPN calculator that cost $99.99 for Christmas 1974 and was able to use it for homework for the last semester of High School, but all calculators were forbidden on tests or quizzes back then (because not all students could afford to get one, typical calculators like mine cost more than $300 I had been very lucky to find the one I did). I still have this calculator, but it gradually developed problems while I was in college (and the old Slide Rule still works perfectly!). When the HP-15C programmable scientific RPN calculator came out in 1982 I instantly bought one at $120 (I still have it and have only replaced the batteries twice in all these years!).

As I understand thing now modern schools requirecalculators on both tests and quizzes! My, how things have changed!!!!!

Answer 2

At first, I thought perhaps this question was put into the wrong category, but then I realized that some young students who have grown up with technology cannot imagine a time when it didn't exist. So let me answer this seriously: no, in the days of the American revolution (back in the mid-to-late 1700s, people had no technology the way we do today. There was no internet, and in addition there were no electric lights, no radio, no television, no telephone, and even newspapers (which were published on paper) came out very, very slowly, days or weeks after the events they were describing.

But because they had nothing to compare it with, since this was the only life they knew, they were not upset that communication was slow. In the revolutionary era, the leaders communicated either in person (by giving a speech to a lot of people)or by publishing pamphlets which they handed out to interested readers (and not everyone could read). Nobody had anything like an iPad back then, and in fact, iPads are even pretty recent even for our time. When people wanted information in the revolutionary era, they used books, or they talked to experts, and they took notes (using pen and paper).