Munich Germany __top__ | Blackberry 850 Introduction Location

If you had been sipping a weissbier in the English Garden on a crisp autumn day 25 years ago, you might have witnessed a peculiar sight: sharply dressed businesspeople staring intently at a tiny green screen, their thumbs moving faster than a Bavarian accordion player’s fingers.

When you walk past the corner of Prannerstraße and Theatinerstraße today—where that launch event likely took place—you are walking through a ghost of the analog past. In 1999, a handful of German tech journalists held a black plastic brick and learned to type with their thumbs. blackberry 850 introduction location munich germany

While the world credits Waterloo, Ontario, as the home of BlackBerry, the genesis of the always-on, thumb-typing revolution didn’t happen in Canada. It happened in the heart of Bavaria, with the introduction of the . The "Interim" Device That Changed Everything By 1999, Research In Motion (RIM) had already dabbled in pagers. But the 850 was different. It wasn't a phone. It wasn't really an email machine yet. It was a wireless handheld device that looked like a bar of soap that had swallowed a tiny QWERTY keyboard. If you had been sipping a weissbier in

They didn't know it yet, but they had just downloaded the first virus of the 21st century: the addiction to always being on . While the world credits Waterloo, Ontario, as the