When Was the Laptop Invented?

The first laptop was invented in 1981 by a company called Osborne Computer Corporation.

The Osborne 1 weighed 10 pounds and cost $1,795.

That $1,795 in today’s money would be $5,800!

It had 64 kilobytes of memory, a 5-inch black-and-white screen, and ran the CP/M operating system.

Osborne 1 (1981) -> Compaq Portable (1982)

While it’s considered the first laptop, it wasn’t very portable.

The Osborne 1 was quickly followed by the Compaq Portable in 1982, which was the first laptop to use an Intel 8086 processor.

It weighed 28 pounds and cost $3,590.

Epson HX-20 (1983)

The Epson HX-20 was released in 1983 and is considered the first true laptop because it could fit in a standard attache case.

It had 4 kilobytes of memory, a 20-character by 4-line LCD screen, and ran on batteries.

ThinkPad 700C (1989)

In 1989, IBM released the ThinkPad 700C, which was thinner and lighter than previous laptops at only 6.9 pounds.

It had a 10.4-inch color display and ran on MS-DOS.

First Apple Laptop (1989)

The first Apple laptop was the Macintosh Portable, released in 1989.

It weighed 16 pounds and cost $6,500.

It had a 9-inch black-and-white screen and ran the Mac OS operating system.

Compaq LTE Lite (1991)

In 1991, Compaq released the LTE Lite, which was the first laptop with a color screen.

ThinkPad 750C (1992)

In 1992, IBM released the ThinkPad 750C, which was the thinnest and lightest ThinkPad at only 3.8 pounds.

Laptops have come a long way since they were first introduced in the early 1980s!