13 Critical Machines

THEBIRTHOFTHENOTEBOOK History has a way of reinventing itself. Like modern computer. Oh, and it weighed 2 pounds. Michael Jackson, the past makes strange and The only catch was that the Dynabook didn’t exist. The sometimes hideous transformations — and, as technology it required simply hadn’t been invented yet. At with Jacko, it’s not always easy to fi gure out what the time, only primitive LCD and plasma displays were being exactly happened. tinkered with, and the technology for one wireless modem took THEBIRTHOF Who invented the telephone? Was it Alexander Graham up half of an Econoline van. Bell or Elisha Gray? The Wright brothers made the fi rst fl ight The closest Kay ever got to building the Dynabook was a in a passenger plane, but what about Otto Lilienthal, whose cardboard mock-up fi lled with lead pellets. gliders infl uenced the brothers in their quest? From the game of chess to the pinball machine to the fortune cookie, the THE MINIATURE MAINFRAME THENOTEBOOK birth of countless famous products is a matter for debate. One of the factors keeping Xerox from working on the Dynabook And so it is with the portable computer. Who’s responsible was the market, which at the time could be summed up in one Mobile PC takes you on the strange and harrowing for pioneering the biggest shift in PC technology since the word: IBM. The computing giant had swallowed an astonishing punch card gave way to the magnetic disk? 81-percent share of the computer market by 1961, quashing journey to the origins of portable computing It depends on whom you ask. competitive innovation for years to come. In the 1970s, Xerox was working on its Alto line (the YOU KNOW, FOR KIDS revolutionary machine from which Apple would steal its The notion of portable computing dates back to the early graphical user interface and mouse), but the company shied days of computing itself. Pioneering nerds may not have had away from a portable, mainly because no one else was doing it. Starbucks tables to occupy with their PowerBooks for hours on “If mobile was so important,” says Kay, “why wasn’t IBM doing end, but toiling away over punch cards in a dreary back room it? Of course, by the time IBM got around to doing what they never had much appeal. Not surprisingly, the prospect of taking called the portable computer, they did it very badly, and it set your computer home so that you could work in a more relaxed things back quite a few years.” atmosphere was always enticing. By 1975, IBM fi nally got around to it. The company’s fi rst The problem: In the 1950s and ’60s, computers were so big effort has largely been forgotten, but the IBM 5100 Portable TOSHIBA PORTÉGÉ R100, 2005 that they came built into tables and bookshelf units. Computer stands as — technically — the fi rst mobile PC. In 1968, Xerox PARC’s Alan Kay came up with a bold idea: Mobile, that is, if you consider a 50-pound machine mobile. Saw those legs off the table and shrink the computer down But the 5100 was still way ahead of its time: Only six or seven to more manageable chunks that could be stitched together years earlier its 64KB of storage, integrated tape drive, and and tucked under your arm. His Dynabook was originally optional printer would have weighed about 1,000 pounds. envisioned as a computer for children. Inspired by the design Sticklers agree: The 5100 represents the fi rst production of a regular hardback book, the Dynabook featured a fl at-panel portable computer. So does the Smithsonian, where a prototype display, wireless connectivity, and the full capabilities of a now resides. 13 CRITICAL MACHINES TheseThese pportablesortables rrepresentepresent ssomeome ooff tthehe mmostost ccrucialrucial tturningurning pointspoints iinn mmobileobile computingcomputing 1975 1982 IBM 5100 Portable GRiD Compass 1100 Computer The fi rst mobile computer with a folding The fi rst computer with a built-in screen, the GRiD Compass was a coveted display, this 50-pound monster was survivor for more than a decade. swept under the rug after the PC Introduced: 1982 Discontinued: 1992 came out in 1981. $8,150 8 pounds Introduced: 1975 Discontinued: 1982 6-inch6-inch electro-luminescentelectro-luminescent displaydisplay $8,975 to $19,975 50 pounds 256KB256KB ofof bubblebubble memorymemory 5-inch monochrome CRT 16KB to 64KB of main storage 1/4-inch1/4-inch tapetape drivedrive 19811981 OsborneOsborne 1 AdamAdam Osborne’sOsborne’s laborlabor ofof lovelove waswas anan overnightovernight ssuccessuccess ...... aandnd aann oovernightvernight ffailure.ailure. TTodayoday iitt iiss remembered fondly as a pioneer in portability. Introduced: 1981 Discontinued: 1983 $1,795 24.5 pounds 5-inch monochrome CRT 64KB of RAM IBM PC CONVERTIBLE, 1986 by Christopher Null Dual 5.25-inch fl oppy drives APRIL 2005 APRIL 2005 064 065 THEBIRTHOFTHENOTEBOOK PORTABLE PIONEERS semiclamshell design, with a screen that could fold down the way it was hoped. GRiD was eventually bought by Tandy THE IBM CONNECTION By 1980, the personal computing market was about to take over the system. in 1989 and vanished into the maw of Radio Shack. It’s impossible to understate the importance of the IBM PC, off. Working independently, three separate companies Ellenby recounts the innumerable challenges the Compass Nearly a footnote in the holy trinity of portables is Gavilan introduced to the world in 1981. Finally, wireheads could get were formed, each with the goal of providing the fi rst truly faced in getting to market, which fi nally occurred by 1982: Computer , which introduced a GRiD-like computer — the a relatively affordable machine (at $1,565) with standard portable computer. These companies — none of which are still Large fl at panels and miniature modems still didn’t exist; SC — with a couple of big fi rsts: an internal fl oppy drive and a hardware and an operating system the industry would come with us — form the canonical “big three” of early portables, GRiD was developing its own graphical operating system from primitive touch pad. The company toiled for almost fi ve years both to adore and to hate: MS-DOS. Time named the PC “man and each of their fl agship products is an essential machine in scratch; and heat was a major problem. And then there was the to get its computer to market; by 1983, the SC was released to of the year” a few months later. Microsoft’s shrewd decision to the history of portable computing. issue of the target weight: 8 pounds, the mass the company a disenchanted audience. Plagued with problems, the product retain the rights to MS-DOS launched the PC revolution, as other First there’s the strange and sad case of Osborne Computer, determined a human being was “just able to tolerate.” and the company quickly died. As Byte magazine noted, “In companies could now get in on the action, leading at long last which has become part of technology legend: Osborne Ellenby recruited design expert Bill Moggridge to help fi t all 1984, a Gavilan executive announced, ‘The microcomputer to a standardized computing environment. shipped its fi rst machine in July 1981 and was bankrupt by his ideas into a single case. Moggridge designed the machine industry is entering a new chapter — Chapter 11.’” And so it wasn’t long before the clones started to arrive, but the end of 1983. Computing pioneer Adam Osborne, operating to fi t in “half a briefcase,” including a display that folded down the fi rst and most important came from Compaq, a scrappy little under the mantra “Adequacy is suffi cient; everything else from the middle of the machine and a leg on the underside that THE FIRST LAPTOP company formed in a Houston pie shop by three former Texas is irrelevant,” sought to produce not just a truly portable propped it all up for comfortable typing. The design was so In this same era, a new class of low-cost, low-power Instruments employees. The idea was elusively simple: Do computer, but one that the masses could afford. popular that GRiD licensed it to other portable manufacturers. computers was born. Epson’s HX-20 , introduced in 1982, something that would be compatible with the IBM PC but that Inspired by the IBM 5100 and Xerox’s Notetaker — a 48- Among the 43 innovations in the Compass were the was the fi rst computer described as a “laptop.” These were wouldn’t compete directly with it. The possibility of a smaller, pound machine with a keyboard that folded over the display electro-luminescent display, a low-profi le keyboard, and the tiny machines designed to be propped in your lap instead portable version of the PC immediately sprung to mind, and — Osborne’s eponymous computer was cobbled together appearance of bubble memory, an ancient forerunner to fl ash of used on a desk. The HX-20 tipped the scales at barely the team fl eshed out the company’s fi rst product on a place from the cheapest parts he could fi nd. The Osborne 1 hit memory. It was also the most rugged device of its era, with 3 pounds, and it included a built-in tape drive and a tiny mat. This idea led to the company’s name — Compaq being a the market at $1,795, with dual fl oppy drives and a 5-inch a case built from magnesium for strength and to help with printer. Best of all, unlike its bigger forebears, this machine variation on the word “compact.” CRT. Flip the keyboard over the front, latch it on, and your heat dispersal.

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