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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.'"
It was never built?? Not 40 then...
Sorry folks, the "idea" of a laptop is nowhere near a laptop. Otherwise, break out the cake and candles again, happy birthday flying car!!
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
...to make trial runs at size and weight metrics. I loved reading that part. It makes you wonder...who is doing the equivalent right now? I'll bet somebody over at the DoD is estimating how many nanobots they can cram inside a nostril or something, using a funnel and a salt shaker perhaps.
Also, if it really was the 40th year, I'd say it was a pretty fantastic year for laptops, with netbooks and the Macbook Air and all those new ideas coming into popularity.
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.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
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.
In the mid-to-late 80s, a "laptop" was the size of a substantial suitcase and weighed ~20 pounds. Examples were the Osborne and Compaq "luggables". Which name I like because it brings forth the proper picture of a big piece of luggage. That was 20 years ago, nowhere near 40.
The screen was a 5" square, monochrome CRT. The very idea of battery power was nothing but a joke. Clock speed for the newer machines was 7+ MHz. Hard drives (10MB!!) were offered as an option starting around 1990 or so, and added even more to the heft (and the price!). Alternatively you could have one or two 5.25" floppy drives.
The reality is not as pretty a picture, is it?
Many laptops are so depressed at reaching 40yrs old the are setting themselves on fire! Its so sad and unnecessary.
Talk to your laptop today
Its not the years, its the mileage
The movie "2001" had "laptops" that seemed to work. But they were actually built into the tables they sat on and had film projected onto their screens from the rear. And the original Star Trek had a portable slate-like device.
Kay described the Dynabook in the classic PARC publication "Personal Dynamic Media", which was around 1972-1973. There's a picture of a woman stretched out on the grass typing on a laptop-like device. It's a cardboard mockup, but the form factor was about that of a heavy laptop of the late 1990s. Kay called the Xerox Alto the "Interim Dynabook"; it did what the Dynabook was supposed to do, but took about 12U of rack space and a big CRT to do it.
This makes me feel very old. I got a tour of PARC in 1975, met Kay, and saw the first Alto (they were making their own CRTs and were having trouble getting a uniform phosphor coating on the tube), the first networked laser printer, the first Ethernet (described as "an Alohanet with a captive ether"), and the first Smalltalk. It's interesting what Kay thought computers were going to be for. He though that graphical discrite-event simulation was going to be a big deal. He had a demo of a hospital simulation, where patients entered, went through Admitting, Waiting Room, Treatment, Ward, Cashier, Discharge, etc., and you could click on the patient icons (I remember "I a victim of Bowlerthumb") as a message.
None of us thought that the uses of computers would become so banal.
My uncle, a crackerjack computer salesman in Silicon Valley, with his suit, slicked-back hair, big tie and a piece of luggage under his arm showing us 'the future'. It was an Osborne I think. We looked on in awe as he removed the keyboard and we saw the 3 inch monochrome screen. He typed in a couple things and text scrolled by. My uncle was a GOD AMONG MEN. He told us how businesses would one day equip every employee with one of these to do spreadsheets and such while on the road.
My mom said "who wants to bring spreadsheets with them?" (She still carried big boxes of punch-cards home sometimes and would give me a few extras to play with. Not from the box though--she made it clear that I couldn't mess with those at all or the whole thing would be ruined.)
My uncle went on to build a small company that supplied parts to manufacturers in the Valley. Until people figured out that you could make them cheaper in Asia. Or just order a shipping container full of parts.
Nowadays he specializes in obsolete programming for some company. It seems all his business plans were rooted in early 80s tech. At least he found a niche.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, /. story about forgotten lore -
over many a quaint and curious
While I nodded, nearly napping, then my keys awoke with tapping,
As of one gently typing, typing on my laptop keyboard.
"'T is some poster," I muttered, "speculating about his child he does not have. The one, who was Neverborn."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine