GRiD Compass 1100
The GRiD Compass 1100 was probably the first computer to be called a notebook and was launched on the market in April 1982.
The computer was designed by British industrial designer Bill Moggridge in 1979. For this he was awarded the Prince Philip Designers Prize on November 9, 2010. The case was made of a magnesium alloy. In addition, there were design features that can still be found in modern portable computers today; such as the simple, black outer shell with the rounded corners.
The computer included an Intel 8086 processor, a 320 × 240-pixel electroluminescent display (not CGA ), 340 kilobytes of magnetic bubble memory, and a 1200 bit / s modem . Devices such as hard disks and floppy drives could be connected via an IEEE488 I / O interface (also known as GPIB or General Purpose Instrumentation Bus). The device weighed 5 kg.
The Grid Compass ran under GRiD-OS, a special operating system. This and the high price of US $ 8,000-10,000 limited its sales figures and uses. The main customer was the US government. The NASA used it in the early '80s in particular due to its high for that time performance and its light weight. The military special forces acquired the computer in order to carry it with paratroopers in combat.
Together with the Gavilan SC and Sharp PC-5000 , which came out the following year, the GRiD Compass contributed a lot to the basic design of future laptop generations - even if the laptop concept adopted many elements from the Dynabook project, which was launched in the late 1960s Developed by Xerox PARC . The manufacturer of the Compass 1100, GRiD Systems Corporation, was bought out in 1988 by the Tandy Corporation , now known as RadioShack .
A better known early form of portable computer is the Osborne 1 , which gained wider popularity due to its CP / M operating system, although its appearance and size were inferior to the GRiD Compass.
References
- ↑ We need to keep user needs in mind , Technology Review, Interview with Bill Moggridge, May 21, 2007
- ↑ A short story about the world's first laptop
- ↑ Old Computers