Sharp Wizard OZ-7000 (1989)

Sharp Wizard OZ-7000

The Sharp Wizard OZ-7000, released in 1989, was a pioneer in the "electronic organizer" market and a direct precursor to the modern PDA, famously appearing in pop culture as a status symbol of the high-tech businessman. Featuring a vertical clamshell design and a 96x64 black-and-white LCD, the unit came equipped with 32 KB of internal memory and six core functions: a memo pad, telephone directory, calendar, schedule, world clock, and calculator. What truly set the Wizard apart was its innovative IC Card expansion slot; by sliding transparent touch-sensitive cards over the secondary keyboard area, users could transform the device into a scientific calculator, a language translator, or even a programmable computer using a specialized BASIC expansion card. While it was much larger than the pocket-sized devices that followed, the OZ-7000’s ability to sync data with a PC or Macintosh via a proprietary serial cable made it an indispensable tool for the pre-internet era. Despite lacking a backlight and requiring a constant supply of lithium coin cells to keep its memory from wiping, the "Wizard" became a global success, proving that there was a massive consumer appetite for carrying an entire office's worth of information in a jacket pocket.

Donated by: Brian Quinn