History of the Laptop
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
1,037 words · ~5 min read
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at one time a full-fledged computer that
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could fit into a single room was viewed
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as a pipe dream but a similar concept to
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the Contemporary laptop was envisioned all the way back in
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1968 by computer scientist Alan Kay when
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he conceived of the din book a gadget
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that bore a passing resemblance to a modern e-reader but was perhaps
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surprisingly intended as an educational tool for kids now the D book was never
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manufactured but portable Computing didn't take long to become a reality
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arguably the first ever portable computer for the general public the IBM
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5100 hit the market in
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1975 and yes this is an actual photo of
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the 5100 it essentially looked like an
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entire old school desktop computer except with a tiny 5-in display capable
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of displaying a whopping 1,24 characters wow at 53 lb or 24 kg it
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wasn't exactly uh backpack friendly though to its credit it did come with a
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carrying case but it was hailed as an
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engineering Marvel at the time because packing all those components into one
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somewhat portable box hadn't been done before before and it could be yours for
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the low low price of only
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$9,000 equivalent to about
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$41,000 today subsequent Portables the term
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laptop would be coined later continued the tiny CRT in a heavy case Trend at
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its launch in 1981 the Osborne one
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weighed 242 lb and cost a much more
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reasonable $1,800 so then it wasn't until
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1983 that we saw the first laptop that
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somewhat resembled what we're used to today the
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$88,000 grid Compass which featured a
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flat electroluminescent display instead
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of a CRT helping to reduce the weight to
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less than 11 lbs at the time it's 320x
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240 pixel display was praised for being
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nice and sharp and it even came with 384 kiloby of
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bubble memory an early form of solid state storage fun fact it's rumored that
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the grid Compass served as part of the US president's nuclear football at some
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point but continent destroying capabilities aside the compass had a
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huge weakness in that it wasn't compatible with the widely used IBM PC
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though it didn't take too long for laptop manufacturers to catch on
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starting in 1985 with the kpro 2000
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which came with a surprisingly handsome aluminum shell followed by the IBM PC
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convertible the next year falling prices
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and at least passible portability meant that laptops quickly became popular
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among business users toward the late 1980s and in 1988 the world was
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introduced to the NEC Ultra light weighing just over 4 lb boasting a
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thickness of only 1.4 in which would
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actually put it in the same ballpark as some Modern machines indeed the ultra
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light is often credited with being the first laptop in the world to be called a
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notebook due to its compact size however the ultra light was still
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criticized for being relatively light on
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features and we didn't see a major shift
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in the lightweight laptop industry until Apple rolled out the original PowerBook
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100 which included there System 7 graphical OS as well as a built-in track
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ball another fun fact while it's nearly impossible to find track balls on
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laptops today The PowerBook 100 was credited with popularizing the concept
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of a built-in pointing device and apple would continue this leadership when they
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introduced the first built-in touchpad on a later PowerBook in
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1994 the next year 1995 saw the release
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of Windows 95 which was a big deal for
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laptop technology Windows 95 was able to
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standardize many elements of laptop design thanks to its ability to talk to
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the laptop's BIOS more directly to
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handle functions like power management obviating the need for the wide variety
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of bioses and drivers that were necessary on old older devices making
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manufacturing simpler and increasing
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interoperability another feature that's now ubiquitous on laptops built-in Wi-Fi
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first appeared in 1999 on the Apple
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iBook which was even more well known for its uh interesting design subsequent
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laptops incrementally added features that we're used to today like HD screens
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webcams solid state drives and even
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desktop grade Graphics processing and
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we've gotten some new form factors along the way such as the briefly popular
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Netbook an underpowered Windows machine with an unusably small keyboard which
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was introduced in 2007 and the huge
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Blitz of two in-one touchscreen devices in 2013 when Microsoft rolled out
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Windows 8 along with that horrendous Metro modern whatever you want to call
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it start screen thing and thanks to
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smaller more efficient processors laptops have generally become thinner
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and lighter some are even in the neighborhood of 2 lb Which is less than
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125 of the weight of the original IBM
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5100 maybe one day your laptop won't be
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much thicker than a piece of paper but then you'll run the risk of crumpling it
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up if you get mad at it speaking of paper do you do your
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