Osborne 1 - The First Commercially Successful Portable Microcomputer
Monday, 17 March 2008
Released in 1981 by the Osborne Computer Corporation, the Osborne 1 is considered to be the first true portable computer - it closes-up for protection, and has a carrying handle. The Osborne 1 was powered by a wall plug, and had no internal battery, although an aftermarket battery pack offering 1 hour run-time was available. Early models (tan case) were 120 V only, later models (blue case) could be switched to run on either 120 V or 230 V, 50 or 60 Hz.
While quite revolutionary, the Osborne does have its limitations. For example, the screen is only 5", and can't display more than 52 characters per line of text. To compensate, you can actually scroll the screen display back and forth with the cursor keys to show lines of text up to 128 characters wide.
The two pockets beneath the floppy drives work great for floppy disk storage, although the Osborne modem also fits perfectly in the the left pocket and plugs into the front-mounted "modem" port.
The Osborne was a huge overnight success, with sales reaching 10,000 units a month.
Released in 1981 by the Osborne Computer Corporation, the Osborne 1 is considered to be the first true portable computer - it closes-up for protection, and has a carrying handle. The Osborne 1 was powered by a wall plug, and had no internal battery, although an aftermarket battery pack offering 1 hour run-time was available. Early models (tan case) were 120 V only, later models (blue case) could be switched to run on either 120 V or 230 V, 50 or 60 Hz.