The portable computer was born 30 years ago this weekend, when Adam Osborne unveiled the Osborne 1 in San Francisco.
Osborne, a journalist and book author, made the transition to entrepreneur on the strength of his personality, ambition and vision. And for a short few months, his computer company was on top of the world, with one of the steepest revenue growth curves ever seen. A year and a half later, it was bankrupt, a victim of bad management and the now-notorious “Osborne effect,” referring to the sales-stifling result of announcing a next-generation product while the current generation is still on the shelves.
It’s hard to believe now, but the suitcase-sized PC shown above was state of the art for its time, with a tiny but usable CRT, disk drives and a full-sized keyboard. While its processor and operating system pale in comparison with the humblest smartphone today, it set the stage for later, more successful portables, from the Kaypro to the first Compaq laptop.
For the first time, the notion of taking a computer with you, wherever you might go, was conceivable. That was a huge leap, when less than a decade earlier computers were still the size of filing cabinets, locked away in fluorescent-lit, white-tiled computer rooms.
Harry McCracken has a fantastic, in-depth story on the history of Osborne and the early portable computing industry at Technologizer. It should be required weekend reading for anyone interested in computers.
“He was a God,” legendary technology journalist David Bunnell told McCracken, about Osborne. “I tell people that in those days there were three major people in the industry: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Adam Osborne, and not necessarily in that order. He had a huge following.”
Osborne! (Technologizer)
This post originally published on Wired.com: Happy 30th Birthday to the Portable PC | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
