by Don Hildenbrand

Created on: February 09, 2009

I still fondly remember my first computer. Bought in 1991, it was a Compaq "luggable" PC, all of 24 pounds, 640 k memory, an 8088 processor, and 2 floppy disk drives. It sported a 3 inch green monochrome screen which made the old DOS prompt nearly impossible to see. (Yes, I was a little behind the curve then.) A few months later, I had the opportunity to purchase another Compaq computer, this one also a luggable PC, with a 386 processor, 2 megabytes of RAM, a 20 megabyte hard drive, and a cutting edge plasma screen with MCGA resolution. Although this PC didn't weigh quite as much as the first one, it was still a chore to "lug". But I thought it was wonderful just to be able to take my PC with me, even though I was still tied to the power cord.

Fast forward to 2009, and I find myself typing on a laptop PC that has a dual core, 1.90 GHz processor, 2 Gigabytes of RAM, a 15 inch full color screen, and all the other amenities we take for granted these days. We've progressed a long ways in less than two short decades.

So, what is the history behind the laptops we enjoy today? How did they evolve from 24 pound "luggables" to the trim, slim notebooks and netbooks we have now?

It's a difficult question to answer, as opinions vary as to what the first "laptops" truly were. Those portable computers of yore were not at all like the portable PC's of today in appearance, but they were both portable and "laptopable", so we will look at some of the notable firsts in the evolution of the laptop PC.

Perhaps the first laptop was designed in 1979 by an English citizen named William
Moggridge. It was small and light for it's time, had 320 kb of "bubble memory", and was used by NASA on quite a few space flights well into the 1990's. It actually had a folding display, and looked remarkably similar to the laptops of today.

Manny Fernandez, who founded Gavilian Computers, produced what many consider to be the first true laptop computer in 1983. He believed that traveling business people would benefit from a portable PC, and so invented and produced the Gavilian.

Another contender for the title of first laptop is the Osborne 1. Adam Asborne produced this PC in 1981, but it never became very successful. The Osborne came standard with a five inch screen, a modem, and actually used a battery pack. It weighed in at twenty four pounds. It was produced around the same time that Microsoft's Bill Gates was considering producing a laptop. However, Mr. Gates passed on this idea, and the PC he was contemplating was produced by Radio Shack, and dubbed the TRS-80 Model 100. This portable PC is still remembered fondly by many PC enthusiasts.

Among other notable achievements in the evolution of the laptop, in 1988 Compaq introduced the SLT/286, the first portable with VGA graphics; In 1989 the NEC UltraLite was produced, which was the first "modern style" notebook that weighed under five pounds; And in 1989 Apple released the Macintosh Portable, which weighed over 16 pounds, and which became the basis for the later design of the familiar Powerbook.

The 1990's began the true age of the laptop, as companies competed to produce the most powerful, yet lightest laptop computers possible. The technological advances made during this time made the modern day laptop possible.

Although the laptop computers we enjoy today are very much unlike those first contenders for the title, we truly owe our modern laptop experiences to those early pioneers who had the vision to foresee a time when portable computing would not only be feasible, but necessary.

Happy computing!

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