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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."

7 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Once upon a time by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Once I was talking to my grandpa about old computers, and I mentioned that my C64 had a slow 300 baud modem. He used to work on these mainframes, and he came right back and said, "the first modem I had was 9 baud." The article doesn't say how fast their modem is, but from the picture 9 baud is about right.

    Just for comparison, 300 baud is so slow that you can read the text faster than it downloads. That teletype is honestly not the most convenient device.

    --
    Qxe4
    1. Re:Once upon a time by a2wflc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'd trade my current 6MB connection and today's web sites, email, blogs, etc for the 300 baud modem I had in the 70s/80s and the BBSs, news groups, talk/chat, and useful information on the other end.

      People knew how to put lots of information in a few sentences or at most a couple of paragraphs. I may have seen the info show up slowly, 1 character at a time, but after 30-60 seconds I had what I want. Now I have megabytes show up in seconds, but it may take minutes to find the useful information (if useful information is even there)

  2. Re:Even back then... by Mitchell314 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nah. 64 baud is all you'll ever need.

    - "But can they run asynchronous?"

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    I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
  3. Portables vs. Transportables by alewar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For me anything bigger than 13' isn't portable, but "transportable".

    1. Re:Portables vs. Transportables by Korin43 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Based on my experience with LAN parties, anything that isn't bolted to the ground is "portable".

  4. The true first portable modern computer... by galaad2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    However, the true* first portable computer began its early development in 1956, got approved in 1958 and entered active service in 1962: (*=The one that melts your face off)

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/05/tob_minuteman_1/print.html

    quote from TFA:

    the American government was already rocking a line of cutting-edge portable computers that -- had they only been more widely released -- would have melted any tech lover's heart. And their face. And probably most everything within a mile radius.

    We're speaking, of course, of the first-ever guidance system baked into the US Minuteman 1 nuclear missile. Maximum portability: about 9,700 km (6,000 mi). Target demographic: Commies.

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    root@127.0.0.1
  5. 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.