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The Laptop, Circa 1968

Posted by timothy on from the some-turtles-have-nice-shells dept.

Harry writes "In 1968, computers tended to occupy entire rooms, and were therefore hard to take with you. But Computerworld reports on Anderson Jacobson's 75-pound Teletype-terminal-in-a-case, an early attempt to let folks compute from anywhere. (Well, anywhere they had power and access to a telephone for the Teletype's acoustic coupler.) Wheels were optional."

1 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Aristotle by cstacy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...Or they didn't move as much. I don't think this was carried around in the way that a laptop was but rather this was (for the time) a lighter alternative to a desktop, similar to the mini-PCs today like the Mac Mini.

    Why do people wildly speculate like this when it comes to vintage computing? The people from back then are still around, and you can just ask them.

    Yes, we did carry these around like a laptop. Not from room to room during the day, but commuting between home and office and to other offices/sites.