the user to remain connected with either a base com-
puter or the Internet while moving around, PDAs
became indispensable for executives and others who
needed computing not bounded by location. As a re-
sult, by the beginning of the twenty-first century a
convergence began to develop between PDAs and
cellular telephones.
Further Reading
Butter, Andrea, and David Pogue.Piloting Palm: The
Inside Stor y of Palm, Handspring, and the Birth of the
Billion-Dollar Handheld Industr y. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 2002. A history of the Palm PDA.
Kounalakis, Markos.Defying Gravity: The Making of
Newton. Hillsboro, Oreg.: Beyond Worlds Pub-
lishing, 1993. The history of the Apple Newton in
words and pictures.
Malone, Michael S. Infinite Loop: How Apple, the
World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company, Went
Insane. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Places the
Newton into the context of Apple’s confused
business model during the middle of the 1990’s.
Swedin, Eric G., and David L. Ferro.Computers: The
Life Stor y of a Technology. Greenwood Technogra-
phies. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005.
A basic overview that puts the PDA in perspective
as part of the larger computer revolution.
Leigh Husband Kimmel
See also Apple Computer; Cell phones; Compu-
ters; Internet; Jobs, Steve; MP3 format; Science and
technology.
Perfect Storm, the
The Event An unusual combination of three
weather systems produces a severe single storm
Date October 28-November 1, 1991
This huge storm caused havoc along the eastern seaboard of
North America, killing twelve people and causing hun-
dreds of millions of dollars worth of damage.
The moniker the “Perfect Storm” was coined by au-
thor and journalist Sebastian Junger after a com-
ment made by a National Weather Service (NWS)
deputy. The term refers to the combination of three
lesser weather events into a single massive storm that
was far more damaging than if the storms had stayed
separate. The Perfect Storm is also referred to as the
“1991 Halloween Nor’easter” or colloquially as the
“No-Name Storm” in New England.
On October 28, 1991, a mass of warm air from
over the Atlantic Ocean and a flow of cool dry air
from Canada created a classic weather event called a
nor’easter. The event was typical for the time of year,
although larger than average. The nor’easter was lo-
cated a few hundred miles east of Nova Scotia. The
resulting low pressure system pulled the remnants of
Hurricane Grace into the storm on October 29.
Hurricane Grace had already been generating ten-
to fifteen-foot swells, and with the added energy, the
Perfect Storm was generating hurricane-force gusts
up 65 knots (74.9 miles per hour) and wave heights
of thirty-nine feet by its peak on October 30 accord-
ing to the NWS. The storm itself was over fifteen
hundred miles wide, well over five times the size of a
typical hurricane. Although the NWS has no data to
support it, waves at sea were reported to be as high as
one hundred feet by eyewitness accounts. A Cana-
dian weather buoy also recorded similar readings.
The storm at this time had drifted southward and
was about 350 miles south of Halifax. The storm was
so large that waves ten to thirty feet high were com-
mon from North Carolina to Nova Scotia.
By October 31, the storm had stalled and started
moving backward toward the west. It lost energy over
the next few days but did not dissipate. Instead, it
gained energy from the warm waters of the Gulf
Stream and developed into a hurricane by Novem-
ber 2. It made landfall in Nova Scotia and quickly de-
generated into a tropical depression. It dissipated
within ten hours of landfall, and no damage was re-
ported. The hurricane was never named to avoid
confusion between the unnamed hurricane and the
Halloween Nor’easter.Rescue Efforts and Aftermath Because of the unex-
pected formation and severity of the storm, fishing
and sailing vessels were caught unawares in the four-
story-high waves. The Coast Guard cutterTamaroa
rescued three people from the sailing vesselSatorion
October 30. That day, a New York National Guard
helicopter had to ditch because of lack of fuel after
trying to rescue a solo sailor 250 miles southeast of
Long Island. A Coast Guard helicopter tried to res-
cue the downed crew members, but the winds were
so strong that the rescue basket threatened to blow
into the tail rotor. TheTamaroaarrived on the scene,
and the helicopter assisted by dropping flares andThe Nineties in America Perfect Storm, the 661