History of Laptop Computers
The development of notebook style laptops
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It's a little hard to determine what was the first portable or laptop computer. The first portable computers did not look like the book-sized and folding laptops that we are familiar with today, however, they were both portable and lapable, and lead to the development of notebook style laptops. The computer considered by most historians to be the first true portable computer was the Osborne 1. Designed in 1979 by a Briton, William Moggridge, for Grid Systems Corporation, the Grid Compass was one fifth the weight of any model equivalent in performance and was used by NASA on the space shuttle program in the early 1980's. It used the CP/M operating system and, although it was large and heavy compared to today's laptops, with a tiny CRT monitor, weighed 24 pounds and cost $1795. The Osborne 1 came with a five-inch screen, modem port, two 5 1/4 floppy drives, a large collection of bundled software programs, and a battery pack. However, the computer company that manufactures the first laptop was never successful. |
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| A bigger impact had the Compaq Portable, the first product from Compaq, introduced in 1983, by which time the IBM Personal Computer had become the standard platform. Although barely more portable than the Osborne machines, and also requiring AC power to run, it ran MS-DOS and was the first true IBM clone (IBM's own later Portable Computer, which arrived in 1984, was notably less IBM PC-compatible than the Compaq. Another significant machine first sold widely in 1983, was the Epson HX-20. A simple handheld computer, it featured a full-transit 68-key keyboard, rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, a small (120 x 32-pixel) dot-matrix LCD display with 4 lines of text, 20 characters per line text mode, a 24 column dot matrix printer, a Microsoft BASIC interpreter, and 16 kB of RAM (expandable to 32 kB). |  |
| The first true laptop was the GRiD Compass 1101, designed by Bill Moggridge was released in 1982. The Compass is very high-tech, with its flat-black, die-cast magnesium-alloy case, and bright, sharp electroluminescent display (ELD). It was faster than the other computers of that time and none had such a unique and large, easy-to-read screen, allowing full 80x24 text. The computer could be run from batteries, and was equipped with a 320×200-pixel plasma display and 384 kilobyte bubble memory. However, it was used heavily by the U.S. military, and by NASA on the Space Shuttle during the 1980s. The GRiD's manufacturer subsequently earned significant returns on its patent rights as its innovations became commonplace. |  |
| Among the first commercial IBM-compatible laptops were the IBM PC Convertible, introduced in 1986, and two Toshiba models, the T1000 and T1200, introduced in 1987. Although limited floppy-based DOS machines, with the operating system stored in read-only memory, the Toshiba models were small and light enough to be carried in a backpack, and could be run off lead-acid batteries. These also introduced the now-standard "resume" feature to DOS-based machines: the computer could be paused between sessions, without having to be restarted each time. |  |
| By the end of the 1980s, laptop computers were becoming popular among business people. The NEC_UltraLite, released in mid-1989, was perhaps the first notebook computer, weighing just over 2 kg; in lieu of a floppy or hard drive, it contained a 2 megabyte RAM drive, but this reduced its utility as well as its size. The first notebook computers to include hard drives were those of the Compaq LTE series, introduced toward the end of that year. Truly the size of a notebook, they also featured grayscale backlit displays with CGA resolution. |  |
| The first Apple Computer machine designed to be used on the go was the 1989 Macintosh Portable (although an LCD screen had been an option for the transportable Apple IIc in 1984). The Apple PowerBook series, introduced in October 1991, pioneered changes such as the placement of the keyboard, room for palm rest, and the inclusion of a built-in pointing device (a trackball). The following year, IBM released its Thinkpad 700C, featuring a similar design (though with a distinctive red TrackPoint pointing device). |  |
| The summer of 1995 was a significant turning point in the history of notebook computing. In August of that year Microsoft introduced Windows_95. It was the first time that Microsoft had placed much of the power management control in the operating system. This move by Microsoft was controversial in the eyes of notebook designers because it greatly reduced their ability to innovate; however, it did serve its role in simplifying and stabilizing certain aspects of notebook design. As technology improved during the 1990s, the usefulness and popularity of laptops increased and the prices went down. | |
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