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Thirty Years of Clamshell Computing
harrymcc writes "2012 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Grid Compass 1101, the first portable computer with a briefcase-like case with a keyboard on one side of the interior, a flat screen on the other, and a hinge in the middle--the 'clamshell' design that eventually became standard for all portable PCs. It's proven to be a remarkably useful and durable design, and only with the advent of the iPad has it faced serious competition."
Sometimes I question my priorities in life.
The Tandy Model 100 gave it competition way before the iPad.
In 1972, EMS Synthi AKS was a briefcase with a keyboard on one side -- it just happened to have a synthesizer on the other side, instead of a computer. The clamshell design is a pretty obvious model to follow.
As my reward for this post, I would be happily accept a Synthi AKS. It seems fitting, you know?
As electronics become smaller, the only pieces that must remain large are the input and output devices, so the clamshell makes the best use of space. The iPad's input device isn't meant for serious input... a keystroke here or a mouse click there. Typing a real paragraph is a pain the fingers.
Now what I am really looking forward to is when these computers can output directly to my retina :)
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The great iBook G3 from 1999 AKA 'the toilet seat'.
If they could input directly from your mind, why bother without output via retina? That's an analog connection..
Presumably, reading minds is safer than writing minds.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The first one I got to see and use was this. Most of the space was used-up by the 1541 floppy drive, which was a monster (as big as the computer itself):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_SX-64
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
"First commercially successful portable computer" according to the almighty wiki, launched in 1981.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1
I'd like to see someone come up with a viable tablet/laptop hybrid. Either with swiveling screen that can be closed with the keyboard hidden or exposed. Maybe even a detachable full keyboard. I think it's been done before, but now that tablets are more successful, there's probably more of a market. Maybe gambling with laptop form factors is higher risk that with cell phones, but it would be great to see the same level of experimentation.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Unlike the Tandy, the grid computer only ran on line current. Compared to other portable computers the innovation in this machine was the flat display and internal expandability and storage. The expense of the screen was significant. Note that first Apple Mac was also a portable computer, but used a CRT.
In any case most of the computers through the 80's were not laptops, and we did not get reliable clamshells until 1990's.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Anyone who does anything productive an iPad ends up buying a case and a bluetooth keyboard, ending up with exactly the same overall use case as a clamshell laptop. The only advantage with the iPad is that the keyboard is optional, but for those of us who do a lot of work that "optional" part is a hassle and thus I always end up just using my laptop anyway. Anyone who claims they can be productive for long periods of typing with the terrible iPad on-screen keyboard is probably lying.
Pen Computing was around in the mid 1980s and Microsoft Windows for Pens was released in 1991. Much like 3D movies are not new ( I have a VHS copy of the 1950s classic "Cat Women of the Moon in 3D" around someplace), the iPad is not a new idea even if it is nifty.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Apple eMate, bitches.
The form makes sense. For a portable computer usable for typing you've got a few requirements:
When you combine the two, a hinged clamshell design's the simplest one that satisfies the requirements. The twistable ones for convertible tablets isn't as physically tough as a simple hinge, and the electrical connection's more complex with more chance of breakage or glitches. Single-piece tablets either lack a keyboard or have a poor angle on either the screen or the keyboard, plus they expose the entire screen to damage and have to be physically large to provide the surface area for both the screen and keyboard in a single housing. Wireless keyboards alleviate some of those problems, but now you've got two pieces to keep track of and keep recharged and potentially get lost.
Given all that, I don't see the basic clamshell design fading any time soon. Certainly not as long as we need a portable device we can type significant amounts of text on.
Had a GRiDcase III plus once upon a time, bought new in 1985 for $8,150, cash --- should've bought stock instead. Oh well, easy come, easy go. It and the NeXT Cube I had later were the nicest machines I ever used.
Other things to look forward to:
- anniversary of the ThinkPad announcement --- everyone should get and read _ThinkPad: A Different Shade of Blue_ by Deborah A. Dell --- fascinating insight into the creation of the ThinkPad
- anniversary of the NCR-3125 --- the first successful (for low values of ``success'') pen computer --- _Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure_ by Jerry Kaplan covers this well.
We seem to've missed the TRS-80 PC-1 25th anniversary though.... http://oldcomputers.net/trs80pc1.html
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
only with the advent of the iPad has it faced serious competition.
Because the iPad was the first tablet device. -.-
With the removable zagmate bluetooth keyboard, iWorks office suite, omnigraffle, iOS mail + calendar + contacts, kindle reader for reading pdf's, and cdyia mobile terminal + openssh, my iPad3 has become a serious and portable work device. (The retina display is really beneficial to me.)
My biggest issue with the iPod is that the gcc tool chain is no longer available for native development with ios 5.*, as was possible in ios 4.*. :-(
In 1989 we looked into an SBIR for the military and it would run on a ruggedized Toshiba, which was like $10,000. Like a Compaq but you could tumble it around on the ground.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
How many Grid Compasses are still in use today? The TRS-80 Model 100 is a remarkably robust design that continues to be the preferred choice for writers "in the field" where access to electricity is limited -- a keyboard, an LCD screen, a full-travel keyboard, and it can run for months on 4 AA batteries -- only the Alphasmarts outclassed it for pure writing enjoyment and durability.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
(..) so the clamshell makes the best use of space.
Considering today's power/heat constraints, I find the usual "CPU/GPU under keyboard" configuration illogical. Why not a CPU / GPU / RAM board behind the screen, with a large/thin (passive, if possible) cooling plate at the rear? Or draw air in near the hinges, let air out near the top of the screen (again, passive if possible). Those 2 cooling methods wouldn't bite each other... Then just battery, keyboard, hard disk and peripherals like DVD drive (if fitted) under the keyboard. A few serial connections like USB / SATA + power between the two halves. Likely would leave more space such that a larger battery is possible.
Much better than packing heat-producing CPU/GPU right next to a heat-sensitive battery (+ a tiny blower to pull that heat out).
My main beef with the clamshell design is it's difficult to use from your average economy seat on an airplane. If you have the keyboard at a comfortable typing distance, the screen has to tilt forward to not hit the seat in front of you. Getting it to a proper angle means pulling the keyboard uncomfortably close to your body.
The Vadem Clio had an interesting design where the screen was mounted in the middle on arms that attached to the back. Thus, it could hover over the keyboard and still tilt back. I never got a chance to see or use one, but I had hopes this design would alleviate the airplane seat problem. Alas, it seems to have disappeared from the market, and the patents for this design are either not being licensed out or nobody wants to take this risk.
I'd like to see someone come up with a viable tablet/laptop hybrid. Either with swiveling screen that can be closed with the keyboard hidden or exposed. Maybe even a detachable full keyboard.
You must have missed every Slashdot story about the "Transformer" tablets by ASUS, which is designed to plug into a keyboard/battery unit that looks like the bottom half of a laptop.
Dvorak called a similar-looking 1982 computer a "half-clamshell". Also, until just now, I had always assumed that the term "clamshell" was coined in Whoopi Goldberg's 1986 movie but a search in New York Times archives for "clamshell AND computer" turned up hits from 1983. So I can't blast Time Magazine for an anachronism.
Did you just seriously claim that 30 years of notebooks are in competition with a fucking tablet?
Any bets some marketing droid went to engineering and asked for some string of ones and zeroes that looked compuerish? And some smart-a$$ engineer came back with 1101 knowing it was 13 and also knowing that the marketing droid would never figure that out?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Was Apple really the first to place the keys at the top of the open clamshell, and the pointing device on the lower half under your thumbs? I used a couple of PC notebooks before getting access to a Powerbook, and remember thinking "now this makes *&^%$#@! sense".
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
The very first time I saw an on-screen keyboard, I knew it would never be more than a low-throughput device. I rooted for other screen-based input solutions, but Apple never let them be used as the default interface. Some of them actually worked quite well: I was able to get to 50wpm using the IBM SHARK input method with an afternoon's practice.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I used it for half a year, my company got me one to go around the country and do training on a new system we developed. It was connected to an overhead projector converter, where I could show the text on a projected screen.
For its day, it was a wonderful computer, it was tough, and it wowed people.
It was, however, very heavy for its size, and despite its look, it had no battery. It always had to be plugged in.
The display was far more usable than anything else at the time, it was extremely sharp, but as I recall, it was limited to text.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
For three years, I used a Poqet PC running Forefront's Framework Office Suite. A PC you could fit into a coat pocket. Ran for a full week on 2 AA batteries. Had the best outliner I've ever used, even to this day. A fabulously productive platform.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Back in the day we made an avionics tester with a Grid laptop controlling it. Suckers sold like hotcakes. About 6 months later a sales droid did a follow up sales visit and found all the avionics testers in a corner. Seems the bigwigs all wanted laptops, but they weren't allowed to buy them. 30k avionics testers, on the other hand....
/ remind me again why the guv'mint spends so much?
Dvorak called a similar-looking 1982 computer a "half-clamshell".
Wait, so Dvorak was actually half right about something?!
That must have been the high point of his career.
My first laptop was a Zenith Z-181 which I got for cheap (unlike this one, what are they thinking...) at one of those computer dump markets which used to be held quite often back then. The thing still works, but it is currently in storage for lack of usable floppies (it has two 720K 3.5" 'flip-up' drives), time and interest. Its dark-blue-on-light-blue screen (or the other way around if that was preferred) felt strangely familiar, coming from a Commodore 64. Even though it has been surpassed in almost every sense by later portable machines, I have yet to use a laptop with a better keyboard. And yes, that does include all those Thinkpads which I've acquired over the years.
--frank[at]unternet.org
in the marketplace. Apple is doomed.
Yes, it is known.
No it's not known. It's believed, in spite of its not actually being true.
Apple drones are like Christians. They prefer to believe in fables rather than in reality, because reality isn't nearly so soothing and ego-stroking.
But I'm sure you'll scurry back to your local cult outreach branch and soon be feeling the love again.
One thing I have always identified with the PowerBook is the elimination of the protrusion behind the screen hinge that earlier machines had to accommodate the size of the mainboard and battery. The PowerBook is the first portable I know of that had the distinctive "L" shape when viewed in profile - all machines before it looked like more of an inverted "T".
Am I wrong or was Apple really the first one to do this?
The original article didn't say that no other form factors have been used, or that the clamshell was the first format. (And the IBM 5150 (IIRC) that I was using in 1978-1979 was also portable, though you usually did the porting on a rolling cart.)
It said that the Clamshell format won, and everything else uses that format these days. Except, of course, for the Palm Pilot, Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad, which also are portable computers that won the Format Wars. (Yes, the Newton used that format before the Palm Pilot, but didn't win, and there were lots of tablet computers before the iPad, but they all choked. And there were other screen+keyboard handhelds before and after the Crackberry, but it was one of the most successful, though the iPhone has mostly killed it.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, you usually ported it on a cart, but you could easily move it from your lab to your office, or your office to the lecture hall, or to the computer room where your grad students could use it, and you didn't have to disassemble/reassemble it the way you did with a PDP-11 or mainframe.
And this meant that when I was taking a number-crunching course in grad school, and our professor didn't want us to waste valuable mainframe time doing graphics with computers when we could learn more doing them by hand, I could learn more trying lots of different time series on the 5100 and print them out on the little thermal printer, and _then_ take the ones that got the results I wanted and graph them by hand :-) If the 5100 hadn't been portable, I wouldn't have had access to it except during limited hours. (And no, I didn't walk uphill both ways in the snow to the computer center - I went to grad school in California. Uphill both ways in the snow was undergrad.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, there are other approaches to it, but it's hard to beat the vinyl iPad cover/stand/keyboard things. Of course, it iPads had the decency to provide USB ports on the side, you could also plug a better keyboard into them when you wanted, without messing with non-standard docking cable adapters.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The article asserts that the clamshell is the portable computer format that "won". It certainly became popular (especially compared to the lunchbox shape), but the Palm Pilot made its format dominant for a few years, until the iPhone killed it. And the iPod is a more specialized computer, although the iPhone has mostly killed it. And the iPhone is very definitely a portable computer (telephony's only one of many apps on it), though you could argue that it's essentially the same format as the Palm Pilot, just nicer and without the non-functional flip-cover. And the iPad's making an actual serious dent in laptop sales.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I remember the Grid Compass computer complete with its HPIB connected hard drive all too well. It had tremendous potential and crashed more often than AmigaDOS 1.0. On top of that of the 6 computers our group of 4 developers had we barely managed to keep one working machine per person on the floor at any given time. But hooboy our military customer loved their sexy look.
{^_^}
The Athena I was actually the first clamshell battery powered portable computer. It was also the first portable computer to use SSD. It ran CP/M (loaded from ROM). When Toshiba and Tandy (which bought Grid) got into a patent dispute, Townsend and Townsend did an intellectual property search to determine that the Athena I first used the clamshell approach and DID NOT PATENT IT. This put the design in the public domain. Hence, for 30 years every manufacturer has used this design royalty free - much to the disappointment of at least one of the two designers of the display-covers-keyboard approach. There is quite a back story to all of this - and one of the inventors is currently reaching out to the media to see who wants to cover this history of what to do and what not to do in making a truly revolutionary invention - the laptop computer.