Do You Know Who Really Invented the Laptop?

The history of personal computers, like most of human history, is a chronicle of our reach exceeding our grasp. Nowhere is this truer than with laptops and tablet PCs.

The supposedly portable computers of the early 1980s, such as Osborne 1 and Compaq, were conventional desktop computers with a small monitor screen and a handle. At an arm-extending 25 to 30 pounds and dependent on an AC outlet, they contributed nothing to laptop technology. In fact, the design for the first tablet PC was set out in 1968, long before most of the technologies necessary to build it were even invented.

That design was the Dynabook, and its author was computer scientist Alan Kay. Its intended audience was children. With its windowed software environment, graphical programming language, and no-moving-parts keyboard, it was designed to be a rugged, inexpensive machine that would unleash creativity. After Kay joined Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), they built the Alto, which modeled the Dynabook’s software, but it was a console machine that weighed several hundred pounds. Note that a young technology enthusiast, Steve Jobs, and a team of engineers took a tour of Xerox PARC in 1979, where they saw demonstrations of the mouse and graphical user interface. Key aspects of what Jobs saw ultimately found their way into Apple’s machines. In 1994, Alan Kay became an Apple Fellow.

Meanwhile, over at Stanford Research Institute, Doug Engelbart was building his own bitmapped graphical user interface. He and his team did extensive research on pointing devices and came up with the mouse. At the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference, Engelbart gave what came to be called “The Mother of All Demos,” where he demonstrated, for the first time, the mouse, hypertext, e-mail, video conferencing, teleconferencing, and collaborative, real-time document editing. In contrast to the education-oriented software of the Dynabook/Alto, Englebart’s work evolved into the backbone of business productivity software.

The first machine that looked like today’s laptops—flat screen in a clamshell design over the keyboard—was the GRiD Compass. British designer Bill Moggridge created it in 1979, and it was actually manufactured in 1982. The sleek, black magnesium case was a knockout, and so was the $10,000 price tag. But it too depended on AC power. Batteries weren’t up to the task of powering the electroluminescent display and Intel 8086 processor. At a mere five pounds without its external disk drive, the Compass found applications on U.S. space missions and in the military. It was too expensive for business applications and it didn’t follow the IBM PC standard, which was rapidly becoming the basis for business computing. But it was the die from which virtually every practical laptop computer was cast.