There’s a new taboo term in the world of mobile
computing: “stylus.”
The word “stylus” might conjure up memories of the
little plastic stick that served as an input mechanism
on clunky turn-of-the-millennium hand-held
devices, like the Palm personal digital assistant or
the first-generation Tablet PCs using Microsoft
software.
Now the makers of a new breed of smartphones and
tablets are reinventing the stylus, but they are
shying away from the S-word.
When The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern dared
to use “stylus” in an interview earlier this month
with Panos Panay, chief of Microsoft’s Surface
hardware group, Mr. Panay said: “We don’t call it a
stylus! We call the pen a pen.”
“Pen” is now the favored term for digital inputs on
tablets like the Surface Pro and smartphones like the
Samsung Galaxy Note 4. But by jettisoning the word
“stylus,” we’re losing a key strand of computing
history.
The original “stylus” was a bit of ancient
technology: It was a pointy stick for writing on clay
or wax tablets, going back to the cuneiform of
Mesopotamia. The Latin word “stilus” also gave rise
to “style,” as the name of the writing utensil got
extended to a writer’s characteristic manner.
New technologies brought new applications of the
word. Thomas Edison came up with an “indenting
stylus” to record telegraph signals on paper. When
Edison developed the phonograph, he used “stylus”
to refer to the chisel-like instrument that recorded
sound in grooves as well as the needle used for
playback.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/just-dont-call-it-a-stylus-1424449912