History of Laptops
The birth of laptop computer (or the concept of portable computer) dates back to the early nineteen seventies, when Alan Kay tried to build his personal computer, Dynabook which can be portable like the present laptops. It was not certain whether he succeeded in his effort, however, the Xerox PARC where Alan worked brought out the first ever portable computer, named Xerox NoteTaker, in 1976. Three years later, William Moggridge of Grid Systems Corporation developed Grid Compass, a portable computer that was used by NASA till early nineteen eighties. These portable PCs, however, were not available for commercial use.
The first portable computer
Osborne 1, was the first portable PC to hit the market. Developed by Adam Osborne, this small PC weighed 24 pounds and used a small CRT monitor. It had a small screen (5 inches) and had all basic features (considered that time) like floppy drive, modem connectivity and even battery. Batteries had less life, hence, Osborne 1 often needed main supply for running.
Two years later, in 1983, Compaq launched its Compaq Portable which was compatible with MS-DOS but required main power supply to run. However, in the same year, Epson HX-20, a PDA computer hit the market and had some advanced features of that time. It had a dot-matrx LCD screen (with 120×32 pixels resolution), 16 MB RAM and other features like 24 column dot matrix printer, MS BASIC interpreter etc. It also had rechargeable NiCAD batteries and can be used in outdoors.
The first laptop
The first portable computer to be marketed as ‘laptop’ was Gavilan SC which hit the market in 1984. The first touchpad was introduced in this PC which also had a LCD display and was compatible with IBM software.
Kyocera Kyotronic was the first laptop to produce the first commercial hit and was launched only in Japan. Later, it was renamed as Tandy series and it had small screen, BASIC interpreter, an internal modem and was supported by AA batteries which had longer life.
IBM developed Kaypro 2000 in 1985 and it had a LCD screen and 3.5” floppy drive. During the next two years, other portable PCs like IBM PC Convertible, Toshiba T1000 and Toshiba1200 were introduced in the market.
Improvements in laptop technology
The leading PC manufacturer, Compaq launched Compaq SLT 286 in 1988. This portable PC was enabled with VGA graphics and grayscale backlit display. Next year, NEC UltraLite, a small portable PC of that time was introduced and it weighed around 6 pounds.
In 1992, IBM launched its Thinkpad 700 and in the same year Advanced Power Management (APM) for laptops was introduced by Microsoft and Intel. Next year, the PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) were introduced in the market. These handheld PCs required stylus pen to interact with.
The onset of Modern laptops
Apple too introduced its Mac based laptops – Macintosh PowerBook series, in 1991. Apple introduced keyboard and in-built pointing device with its PowerBook series that was soon followed by other laptop makers.
In 1994, IBM launched PowerPC that can run on UNIX. After the launch of Microsoft Windows 95, faster developments took place in the arena of laptops such as introduction of CD ROM and shifting to Intel Pentium Processor. The first ever laptop to be built with a Pentium processor was the Gateway Solo which had a hard drive, floppy drive and CD ROM.
During the next few years, manufacturers like IBM ThinkPad, Toshiba and DELL started to bring out laptops with newer features that enhanced the performance while the prices started to come down over the time.
