Francis James Canova Jr. (born 23 December 1956) is an American electronics designer who originated the idea for the

IBM Simon The IBM Simon Personal Communicator (simply known as IBM Simon) is a handheld, touchscreen PDA designed by International Business Machines (IBM), and manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric. Although the term "smartphone" was not coined until 199 ...

and has thus been described as the inventor of the

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

Early life

Frank Canova was born in

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington ( Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina ...

, raised in

Green Cove Springs, Florida Green Cove Springs is a city in and the county seat of Clay County, Florida, United States. The population was 5,378 at the 2000 census. As of 2010, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 6,908. The city is named after the portio ...

, and attended Clay High School, graduating in 1974. He received his advanced education at the

Florida Institute of Technology The Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech or FIT) is a private research university in Melbourne, Florida. The university comprises four academic colleges: Engineering & Science, Aeronautics, Psychology & Liberal Arts, and Business. Appr ...

, graduating with a BSc in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 1978.

Career

IBM

Canova was working at IBM when he realized that chip-and-wireless technology was small enough to use in a hand-held device. His boss, Jerry Merckel, was working on the development of

PCMCIA card In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and develop ...

s that could be used to expand the memory of laptop computers and realized that they could also be used in the sort of device that Canova was thinking of. Both were working in a team that had been put together by Paul C. Mugge to enliven IBM's product range by developing smaller, lighter, products.Before IPhone and Android Came Simon, the First Smartphone.
Ira Sager, Bloomberg, 29 June 2012. Retrieved 8 July 2017. Merckel pitched the idea to Mugge of "the phone of the future" that would use cards inserted into the phone to run services, and the development of a prototype was approved by Mugge. It was decided by IBM to show the device, code named "Angler", at the November 1992

COMDEX COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

technology trade show in Las Vegas, necessitating a rush to complete the prototype by Canova and his team that saw them working 80-hour weeks in order to have it ready. The device was an immediate success at the show and Canova found himself on the front of the money section of ''USA Today'', pictured holding the phone. It was released under the name Simon in August 1994 and patented by Canova and other team members in 1995 with a priority date of 13 November 1992. As the originator of the idea for the IBM Simon, Canova has been described as the inventor of the

Palm

Canova joined

Palm Palm most commonly refers to: * Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand * Palm plants, of family Arecaceae **List of Arecaceae genera * Several other plants known as "palm" Palm or Palms may also refer to: Music * Palm (ba ...

in January 1997 where he was head of engineering for the PalmPilot, Palm III, V, and VII series of

PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting poly ...

s and successor devices.

Other appointments

Canova has also held senior engineering positions at

Plastic Logic Plastic Logic Germany develops and manufactures electrophoretic displays (EPD), based on organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) technology, in Dresden, Germany. Originally a spin-off company from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cam ...

Neato Robotics Vorwerk & Co. KG, trading as Vorwerk, is an international diversified corporate group headquartered in Wuppertal, Germany. Vorwerk was founded in 1883. The main business is the direct distribution of various products like household appliances s ...

Livescribe Livescribe is a paper-based computing platform that consists of a digital pen, digital paper, software applications, and developer tools. Central to the Livescribe platform is the ''smartpen,'' a ballpoint pen with an embedded computer and digita ...

, Reactrix Systems,

Wheels of Zeus Wheels of Zeus (or WoZ) was a company founded in 2002 by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. WoZ made wireless hardware for keeping track of the physical location of enabled objects. In 2004, Motorola announced that it has licensed Wheel of Zeus' ...

and

Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas. The company's audio processo ...

References

External links

Francis J. Canova, Jr. Inventions, Patents and Patent Applications - Justia Patents Search
{{DEFAULTSORT:Canova, Frank J. 1956 births Living people American electronics engineers IBM employees Florida Institute of Technology alumni People from Wilmington, Delaware People from Green Cove Springs, Florida