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Microsoft's very first Surface was this largely forgotten coffee table sized-tablet that Bill Gates loved
(Microsoft Distinguished Scientist Stevie Bathiche, co-inventor of the original Surface table, shows off the Samsung SUR40 giant tablet.Matt Weinberger/Business Insider)
It's mostly forgotten by history now, but the name "Microsoft Surface," now referring to Microsoft's line of actually very good tablets and laptops, originally belonged to a line of 30-inch mega-tablets that doubled as coffee tables.
The idea for that original Surface had been kicking around in Microsoft's research group since the early 2000s, when Stevie Bathiche, now a Microsoft distinguished scientist, and his colleagues brought a killer idea for a new table-based interface straight to Bill Gates.
The Surface got its name because Gates came to see so-called surface computing as a major growth area in the years to come, making desks, tables, or basically any flat surface a little smarter.
In fact, the famous holographic computer interfaces of Steven Spielberg's 2002 sci-fi movie "Minority Report" were directly inspired by conversations Spielberg had with Microsoft about this prototype Surface table.
The original Surface concept, ahead of its time, was for a supersized, infrared-powered touch screen for public places that multiple people could use at once. The Surface 1.0's single best feature was the ability for apps to recognize objects placed on the screen — in one demo, Microsoft showed off using an ordinary paintbrush to "paint."
It took a few years to get to market. Here's Gates demonstrating the Surface 1.0 table in May 2007:
This original Surface launched in 2008, making its way into a few New York hotels and Las Vegas casinos, and MSNBC used it for election maps on-air for that year's presidential election. Microsoft saw it as a new way for stores to sell and restaurants to serve. But it wasn't taking off in the big way that Microsoft had hoped.
Circa 2009, Panos Panay — then in charge of Microsoft's hardware division, now the head of Microsoft Devices — was tasked with revamping the Surface business. "I didn't start the table, but I adopted it," Panay told Business Insider.
(The Surface 1.0 was a 30-inch table that could recognize items, like phones, on it. In this demo, placing a phone on the table brings up pricing and other information about it.Michael Nagle/Getty Images)
Around the same time, Microsoft was starting to work on Windows 8, which was heavily focused on pushing a new touch-screen interface. Microsoft's leadership was concerned that there weren't enough touch-screen PCs on the market at the time to really show off the touch features, which led to Panay getting retasked to build a tablet.
And when the idea came up to repurpose the Surface name from table to tablet, Panay pushed back. To him, the name was already happily in use.
"You have no idea how hard it is to get your head out of the brand," Panay said. "When you're working on something like the table, that's what a 'Surface' is."
(Microsoft Corporate VP of Devices Panos Panay.Matt Weinberger/Business Insider)
He lost the battle. In 2012, the same year that the first Microsoft Surface tablet launched, the table project got the new name "PixelSense." Microsoft also stopped releasing the tables themselves, instead partnering with Samsung for the SUR40, a next-generation version of the table that could also be hung on the wall.
Now, with four generations of Surface in the bag and more to come, Panay says he has come to terms with the name. In fact, he "couldn't imagine it being anything else."
As an epilogue, PixelSense didn't last long, with the Samsung SUR40 getting discontinued in 2013. But the spirit of the table lives on: The Surface Hub, Microsoft's giant tablet for meeting rooms, shares a similar focus on multiuser interfaces — but for the office, not public places.
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