Wireless technology is now part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, thanks to a collection donated by Daniel Henderson, inventor and co-founder of PhoneTel Communications.

Henderson recently donated his collection of early cell phones and other wireless technology devices dating from the early 1970s to the present to the Smithsonian, a museum that traces American heritage through cultural, scientific and technological exhibitions. Objects in the collection include the Casio Z7000 "zoomer," the immediate predecessor to the Palm Pilot, and the Atari Portfolio, the world's first palm-top computer.

Henderson's collection helps document the major innovations in the development of wireless communications and computing technologies, the museum said.

"Wireless devices like the ones we are collecting have had a broad social impact in America," said David Allison, chair of the museum's Division of Information Technology and Society. "Wireless technologies have experienced an extraordinarily rapid rate of acceptance by the public, faster even than the introduction of the computer. The wireless revolution that these devices represent has changed the way society communicates."

Henderson, of Fort Worth, Texas, holds several patents in telephony and communications, some of them related to the history of cellular telephones and handheld computers. The collection includes a paging digital assistant prototype developed by Henderson and patented in the early 1990s. The Henderson prototype is a pager that also served as an electronic address book that could exchange information with a personal computer and receive Caller ID from the telephone network.