The first portable computers were not like the book sized notebooks or flat laptops that we are familiar today.Grid compass, designed in 1979 by William Moggridge, for Grid Systems Corporation, is claimed to be the first light weight computers which comprised of a 340 byte bubble memory with die-cast magnesium case and folding electroluminescent graphics display screen. But the pioneer in laptop was Adam Osborne who found Osborne 1. It weighed 24 pounds and costed $1795, had a 5"screen, modem port, two 5 1/2" floppy disk drives, a battery pack and many software programs.But the product did not last for long in the market.
The brains behind the manufacturing of laptops with LCD screens were Microsoft corp.'s Kazuhiko Nishi and Bill Gates who showed their prototype to Radio Shack, and the latter manufactured TRS-80 Model 100, and a much smaller TRS Model 200 in 1986.
It was in 1988 that Compaq computers introduced their first laptops with VGA graphics.
In March 1991, Microsoft released the Microsoft BallPoint Mouse that used both mouse and trackball technology in a pointing device designed for laptop computers.
Intel and Microsoft released APM or the Advanced Power Management specification for laptop computers in 1992.
The first PDAs or Personal Digital Assistants were released in 1993. PDAs are pen-based hand-held computers.
And thus goes on the history of laptops. Nowadays, laptops contain very sophisicated facilities like face identification, fingerprint password protection, in built speakers in LCD , etc, all built in a lightweighted body. Isnt that great?
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