The Osborne 1
The first successful portable computer was the Osborne 1, created by Adam Osborne in 1980. A computer book author and publisher, Adam believed that for personal computers to be successful, they would have to be portable. Adam’s design for the Osborne 1 portable computer was ambitious for the time: The thing would have to fit under an airline seat — and this was years before anyone would dream of actually using a computer on an airplane. The Osborne 1 portable computer was a whopping success. It featured a full-sized keyboard, two full-sized floppy drives, but a teensy credit card-sized monitor. It wasn’t battery powered, but it did have a handy carrying handle so you could lug the 24-pound beast around like an over-packed suitcase. Despite any shortcomings, they were selling 10,000 units a month (at $1,795 each, which included software — a first for the time). The cash was rolling in.
By late 1983, sadly, Adam’s company floundered, suffering from the onslaught of the new IBM PC and its legion of compatibles and clones. Yet the Osborne 1 proved that computers could be portable. In fact, it founded a new class of computer: the luggable.