Adam Osborne

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Osborne Model 1

Adam Osborne (born March 6, 1939 in Thailand , † March 18, 2003 in Kodaikanal , India ) was an American book author , software developer and computer designer and founder of several companies in the USA. Because of his ancestry, he is considered the British inventor of the laptop .

biography

Early years and education

Adam Osborne was the son of the British writer Arthur Osborne (1906–1970); his mother Ludka Lipszyc (1904–1987), who later called herself Lucia Osborne, came from the Polish part of Silesia . His older sister was the actress Katya Douglas . Adam Osborne was born in Thailand, but spent a large part of his childhood and youth in India in the immediate vicinity of the mystic Ramana Maharshi , whose followers were his parents. From 1950 Osborne completed a school education in Great Britain. He then studied at the University of Birmingham and in 1961 went to the USA, where he completed his doctorate at the University of Delaware . On November 26, 1968, he was granted American citizenship .

Professional career

Osborne Computer Corporation stock

Osborne began his professional career at Shell Oil Company , the American subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell . In the early 1970s, however, he left the company again to pursue his passion for computers. By 1975 Osborne was a member of the well-known Homebrew Computer Club and was often to be found at the club's meetings.

In 1980, Osborne founded Osborne Computer Corporation with the aim of developing a portable computer. In April 1981, Osborne introduced the first Osborne 1 , Model 1 laptop . The calculator weighed 12 kg and was sold for $ 1,795 when it was launched in the United States. CP / M 2.2 was used as the operating system for the computer , and a Zilog Z80 CPU with 4.0 MHz was used in the computer.

While the Osborne Computer Corporation went bankrupt in 1983, it went down in economic history through the Osborne effect named after it : the reason for the bankruptcy was an early announcement of successor models for the Osborne 1. This announcement caused sales of the current models to decline sharply. In anticipation of the next, better Osborne, interest in the current Osborne 1 sank. This allegedly meant that the company had less capital available to complete the development of the Osborne 2. So it had to file for bankruptcy on September 13, 1983. Newer sources say that mismanagement was responsible for the downfall of the company.

Career as a book author

As early as 1972, Osborne had founded a company that specialized in the publication of easy-to-read computer books. By 1977 the publishing house Osborne & Associates had 40 titles in its program and in 1979 it was bought by McGraw-Hill and continued as Osborne / McGraw-Hill .

After the bankruptcy of the Osborne Computer Corporation , Osborne and John C. Dvorak wrote a book about the project entitled Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation , which appeared in the US in 1985 and became a bestseller.

In 1984 Osborne re-established a company called Paperback Software International Ltd. , a software publisher specializing in low-cost software. One of the projects was the VP-Planner , a cheap clone of Lotus 1-2-3 . In 1987, Lotus Software sued the company, and in 1990 the case went to court where Paperback was found guilty of copyright infringement in appearance and interface use. Osborne left Paperback Software that year.

The last years of life

After a brain disease broke out in 1992, Osborne moved to live with his sister Katya in India. In the last years of his life he was looked after by his sister. He died in an ashram in Kodaikanal, India, in 2003 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kitty Osborne: Łucja Osborne (1904-1987). indika.pl, November 20, 2018, accessed January 4, 2020 (Polish, English).
  2. ↑ Arthur Osborne: My Life and Quest , 2001, ISBN 81-88225-20-7 , p. 122 f.
  3. ↑ Matthias Kremp: Computer History: The Schlepptop turns 30. In: Spiegel Online . April 4, 2011, accessed January 31, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Osborne, Adam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British inventor of the laptop
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Thailand
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 2003
Place of death Kodaikanal , India