Today's Prize

In homage to all the mobile game developers out there, the ReadWriteMobile trivia prize is a mobile game. Or, games really. Say hello to the a320 Pocket Retro Game Emulator:

How awesome is this thing? All the old school Nintendo games you would ever want, in your pocket, anywhere you go. Super Nintendo and Sega too. What better prize for mobile developers than a handheld gaming system with all the geeky goodness of the games they played when they were kids?

Martin Cooper & The Brick

The inventor of the modern cellular phone was Martin Cooper. Cooper, who went on to found ArrayComm later in his career, was the general manager of Motorola's Communications Systems Division when he created the 30-ounce monstrosity in 1973. Cooper was once almost run over crossing a street in New York talking on the phone to a radio reporter. He was later involved in creating the 16-ounce DynaTac, one of the first commercially viable cellular phones in 1983. It cost $3,500 and was a status symbol to the wealthy of the world through most of the 1980's.

Imagine it, a one-pound phone! Good thing Moore's Law kicked in. Now we have four-inch touch screens that weigh three ounces and allow us to watch videos of cats playing with dolphins wherever we go.

The iPad Is Alive ... In 1994!

People have been dreaming of effective tablet computers for decades. Tablets have been featured as interfaces in science fiction long before the iPad ever came along. Steve Jobs may have brought us the first commercially successful tablet but the idea was by no means original.

Check out the video below. It is a concept for a news reading device that looks suspiciously tablet like. Who dreamt this creature up? It was the good folks at Knight-Ridder as the future of the newspaper. Imagine if it was a media organization that created the first commercially viable tablet and not Apple and its crack team in Cupertino. The world would be a much different place.

Developing the First iPhone

Before we had the touch screen wonder that became the original iPhone, the team at Apple had several prototypes that Steve Jobs threw out. One of them was an iPod-like contraption that featured a scrolling wheel as opposed to a capacitive touch screen. If that product had been released to the public, the Era Of Mobile as we know it may have never taken place.

In honor of the road not taken, we ask today's trivia question: Whose names are on the Apple patent for text input via click wheel of the pre-iPhone?

Answer in the comments. We will pick a winner tomorrow morning with the most accurate answer. Bonus points if you get the patent number.