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"There's no point in making a mistake unless you understand the mistake so that you don’t make it again."
- Alfred Bester

Hand Computer  
  A small pocket-sized computing device.  

As far as I know, this is the first use of this phrase in science-fiction.

Foster stared at his hand computer with distaste. It worked well enough but every operation had to be manually controlled and the answers were obtained in code. Now if he could use the school computer — Well, why dream, he felt conspicuous enough, as it was, carrying a hand computer under his arm every evening as he left his office.
Technovelgy from The Dead Past, by Isaac Asimov.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1956
Additional resources -

Niven and Pournelle used this phrase in Mote in God’s Eye:

There was a link. When the crew and scientists convened abort HMS Lenin to discuss the HMS McCarthur they logged in to their pocket computers and linked to the ship's main computer. When the xenobiologists convened on New Scotland to discuss the Motie representitives they tested the link between their hand computers and the main computer. When the Brownie took the pocket computer apart and then reassembled it, Sally tested it by linking to the ship's computer.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Dead Past
  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
  Tech news articles related to The Dead Past
  Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov

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