GRiD Compass

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

GRiD Compass

The Grid Compass 1100 (written GRiD by its manufacturer) was arguably the first laptop computer, introduced in April 1982.

The computer was designed by British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
industrial design

Industrial design

Industrial design is an applied art whereby the aesthetics and usability of mass-produced Product may be improved for marketability and Manufacturing....
er Bill Moggridge

Bill Moggridge

William Moggridge, a British industrial designer, is co-founder of the Silicon Valley-based design firm IDEO. He helped design what was arguably the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass....
in 1979, and first sold three years later. The design used a clamshell

Clamshell

The flip or clamshell is an electronics form factor which is in two or more sections that fold via a hinge. Motorola used to have a trademark on the term "flip phone", but the term "flip phone" has become Genericized trademark to be used more frequently than "Clamshell" in colloquial speech....
case (where the screen folds flat to the rest of the computer when closed), which was made from a magnesium alloy.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'GRiD Compass'

Start a new discussion about 'GRiD Compass'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

The Grid Compass 1100 (written GRiD by its manufacturer) was arguably the first laptop computer, introduced in April 1982.

The computer was designed by British

United Kingdom

Industrial design

Industrial design is an applied art whereby the aesthetics and usability of mass-produced Product may be improved for marketability and Manufacturing....
er Bill Moggridge

Bill Moggridge

Clamshell

Intel 8086

The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel and introduced on the market in 1978, which gave rise to the x86 architecture. Intel 8088, released in 1979, was essentially the same chip, but with an external 8-bit bus , and is notable as the processor used in the original IBM PC....
processor

Central processing unit

A central processing unit is an electronic circuit that can execute computer programs. This broad definition can easily be applied to many early computers that existed long before the term "CPU" ever came into widespread usage....
, a 320x200-pixel (CGA

Color Graphics Adapter

The Color Graphics Adapter , originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was International Business Machines's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC....
) electroluminescent display

Electroluminescent display

electroluminescence is an optical and electrical phenomenon where a material emits light in response to an electric current passed through it, or to a strong electric field....
, 340-kilobyte

Kilobyte

Kilobyte is a unit of Computer data storage equal to either 1,024 bytes or 1,000 bytes , depending on context.It is abbreviated in a number of ways: KB, kB, K and Kbyte....
magnetic bubble memory, and a 1200 bit/s modem

Modem

Modem is a peripheral device that modulation an analog carrier wave Signal to encode digital information, and also demodulation such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information....
. Devices like hard drives and floppy drives could be connected via the 488 I/O (also known as the GPIB or General Purpose Instrumentation Bus). This port made it possible to connect multiple devices in a daisy-chain. It weighed 5 kg (11 lb).

As a groundbreaking design, the Compass ran Grid-OS, its very own operating system

Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
. Its specialized software and high price (US$ 8-10,000) meant that it was limited to specialized applications. The main buyer was the U.S. government. NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the Federal government of the United States, responsible for the nation's public list of space agencies....
used it on the Space Shuttle during the early 1980s, as it was both powerful and lightweight. The military Special Forces

United States Special Operations Forces

United States Special Operations Forces are active and reserve component forces of U.S. Military. They are designated by the United States Secretary of Defense, and are specifically trained to conduct operations in an area under enemy or unfriendly control or politically sensitive environments to achieve military, diplomatic, informational, a...
also purchased the machine, as it could be used by paratrooper

Paratrooper

Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an Airborne forces.Paratroopers are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land....
s in combat.

Along with the Gavilan SC

Gavilan SC

The Gavilan SC was an early laptop computer, and was the first ever to be marketed as a "laptop".The brainchild of Gavilan Computer Corp. founder Manuel Fernandez, the Gavilan was introduced in May, 1983, at approximately the same time as the similar Sharp PC-5000....
and Sharp PC-5000

Sharp PC-5000

The Sharp PC-5000 was a pioneering laptop computer, announced by Sharp Corporation of Japan in 1983. Like the GRiD Compass, which preceded it, and its contemporary the Gavilan SC, it employed a clamshell design in which the display closes over the keyboard....
released the following year, the Grid Compass established much of the basic design of subsequent laptop computers, although the laptop concept itself owed much to the Dynabook

Dynabook

The Dynabook concept was created by Alan Kay in 1968, two years before the founding of Xerox PARC. Kay wanted to make ?A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages.? The ideas led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which was originally called ?the interim Dynabook?....
project developed at Xerox PARC

Xerox PARC

PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology....
from the late 1960s. The Compass company subsequently earned significant returns on its patent rights as its innovations became commonplace. The first popular portable computer was the Osborne 1

Osborne 1

The Osborne 1 was the first commercially successful portable computer microcomputer, released in April, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighed 23.5 pounds , cost United States dollar1795, and ran the then-popular CP/M operating system operating system....
, sold at around the same time as the GRiD; it lacked the Compass's refinement and small size, but it was much more affordable and ran the popular CP/M

CP/M

CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/Intel 8085 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research. Initially confined to single tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors....
operating system.

The Compass's manufacturer, Grid Systems Corp., was acquired by Tandy Corporation

Tandy Corporation

Tandy Corporation was a family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas, which is best known for purchasing and giving its name to the Fort Worth, Texas-based RadioShack....
(RadioShack

RadioShack

RadioShack Corporation is a chain of electronics retail stores in the United States, as well as parts of North America, Europe, Central America, South America and Africa....
) in 1988.

External links

- See
at Google Video