they were particularly popular among special education departments for use by students with graphomotor challenges. The machines were also popular among journalists and writers, who found them easy to carry and appreciated the full-size keyboard and long battery life. AlphaSmarts continue to be popular with small groups of writers, despite attempts by other companies as early as 2014 to produce other low-distraction writing tools. Company Intelligent Peripheral Devices, Inc. was founded in 1992 by two previous Apple Computer engineers, Ketan Kothari and Joe Barrus, with the mission to "develop and market affordable, portable personal learning solutions for the classroom" and to "deliver affordable, lightweight, rugged portable computing devices that are expandable, easy to use and manage, and provide exceptional battery life." Shortly after its founding they were joined by Ketan's brother Manish. Later, they changed the name of the company to AlphaSmart, Inc. Barrus and Kothari also hold a US patent on a "portable keyboard computer", applied for in 1992 and granted in 1995. AlphaSmart, Inc. completed its initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ on February 6, 2004 and started trading under the symbol ALSM. In June 2005, it was acquired by Renaissance Learning (NASDAQ: RLRN). The name changed again in the Spring of 2009, this time to NEO Direct, Inc. They went on to release the Neo2 and 2Know Responder hardware products. AlphaSmart products AlphaSmart The original AlphaSmart computer companion was shipped in August 1993, and worked only with Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers, plugging into the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) port. This model provided customers with 16 "pages" of memory (32,000 bytes) for eight separate files (2 pages per file), that were accessed by pressing the corresponding function key. The AlphaSmart took on the aesthetics of the computer it was intended to be partnered with — it had a boxy, durable beige plastic case like the IIGS and Macintoshes of that era. It had a four-line LCD character display similar to what one would find on some appliances. Each character was displayed in its own LCD "box," making the point size and font type fixed. The AlphaSmart could not display graphics, except for ASCII art. It ran on 2 AA batteries and could be used for days at a time due to a power-saving technique, that effectively allowed it to "sleep" in between keystrokes. There was a rechargeable nickel-cadmium battery (NiCad) pack add-on that a customer