The Laptop Celebrates Its 40th Year

Wired has an interview with Alan Kay on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the idea of the laptop computer. Kay's vision, which he dubbed the "Dynabook," was for a 2-pound, 1-Mpixel color computing device. "... the Dynabook was never built. But it greatly inspired the devices we now call laptops, although it's taken four decades to slim the tech down to the point where usable computers actually weigh as little as two pounds. To honor his achievements, Mountain View's Computer History Museum on Wednesday will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the legendary Dynabook. [Quoting Kay:] 'The Amazon Kindle is kind of a subset of a Dynabook — too much of a subset. The screen is too small, it is not very capable of dynamics, the keyboard is poor, etc. But it does have several limited service ideas that are good. The next version of a Kindle could be really exciting.'"

Comments

Doh, Vapourware

[xsee]

It was never built?? Not 40 then...

Re:Doh, Vapourware

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Yeah. Not to troll here, Xerox PARC came up with lots of neat ideas (the Star and all that, but they never actually SOLD anything to speak of. Real laptops (not luggables or lunchboxes) came in around circa 1987, things like the IBM laptop, and the Toshiba T1000 and that crazy black magnesium thing with the plasma display (what was it called? Grid or something). I used to draw crowds with my T1100+ with the 6 Mhz 8088, monochrome 40x80 LCD display and dual 720k floppies - damn near as powerful as any desktop in its day.

Re:Doh, Vapourware

[Martian_Kyo]

good point by that logic the helicopter is celebrating its 515th year, since da Vinci had an idea and technical drawings for one.

Re:Doh, Vapourware

[interploy]

Vaporware indeed. How is this even news? The IDEA of a laptop is 40 years old? Do airplanes now date back to the times of da Vinci? Do we now trace automobiles back to the first time some guy got into his horse'n'buggy and said 'Man, I wish this thing could drive itself.'? Should we be celebrating the first time someone wrote about teleporters? Gimme a break. How about we make note of things that actually happened? He may be credited for it, but I doubt the guy in TFA wasn't the only or even the first one to think it'd be neat to have a computer small enough to carry around.

Title again

[clarkkent09]

In other news, Helicopter Celebrates its 500th Year! Bring out the cake, and thanks for giving us the helicopter Leonardo, what would we do without it for the last five centuries!

This is not the anniversary of the laptop, it's the anniversary of the first known time someone made a drawing of something that roughly looks like a laptop (more like a tablet) on paper.

Good job with the title yet again slashdot editors.

Re:Title again

[JazzLad]

What do we expect from kdawson?

I wish I had a kaypro

[joeflies]

I'm not sure, but a Kaypro has to be lighter than my dell widescreen laptop.

TRS-80 Model 100 was the first laptop

[dtjohnson]

The 'idea' of a laptop is not the same as an actual laptop that people can buy and use. The first laptop that people could really buy and use was the TRS-80 Model 100 introduced in 1983 which makes the laptop 25 years old.

Re:Bzzt. Wrong answer!

[Weedlekin]

"I remember both the Osborne and the TRS80-100. Neither of which I would have wanted in my lap for more than, oh ..., 10 minutes."

Your comments indicate that you don't remember the TRS-80 model 100 at all, because it was nothing like "luggables" such as the Osborne. Tandy's portable weighed 1.2 Kg and ran for 20 hours on 4 alkaline AA batteries, so it sat just as comfortably on a healthy set of knees as any modern netbook, let alone a laptop.