Xerox NoteTaker

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Xerox NoteTaker

The Xerox NoteTaker was perhaps the first portable computer

Portable computer

A portable computer is a computer that is designed to be moved from one place to another and includes a display and keyboard. Portable computers, by their nature, are microcomputers....
. It was 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....
in Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States....
, in 1976. Although it did not enter production, and only around ten prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an original type, form, or instance of something serving as a typical example, basis, or standard for other things of the same category....
s were built, it strongly influenced the design of the later 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....
and Compaq Portable

Compaq Portable

The Compaq Portable was the first product in the Compaq portable series to be commercially available under the Compaq brand . It was the first "100%" IBM PC compatible personal computer not manufactured by IBM, and also the first IBM PC compatible portable computer....
computers.

The NoteTaker was developed by a team that included Adele Goldberg

Adele Goldberg (computer scientist)

Adele Goldberg is a computer scientist who wrote or co-wrote books on the programming language Smalltalk-80. In the 1970s she worked for Xerox's PARC laboratory on the Xerox Alto....
, Douglas Fairbairn

Douglas Fairbairn

Douglas Fairbairn is an American author. He attended but did not graduate from Harvard College, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. His novels include Shoot....
, and Larry Tesler

Larry Tesler

Larry Gordon Tesler is a computer scientist working in the field of human-computer interaction. Tesler has worked at Xerox PARC, Apple Computer, Amazon.com, and Yahoo!...
.

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Encyclopedia

The Xerox NoteTaker was perhaps the first portable computer

Portable computer

Xerox PARC

Palo Alto, California

Prototype

Osborne 1

Compaq Portable

Adele Goldberg (computer scientist)

Douglas Fairbairn

Douglas Fairbairn is an American author. He attended but did not graduate from Harvard College, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. His novels include Shoot....
, and Larry Tesler

Larry Tesler

Larry Gordon Tesler is a computer scientist working in the field of human-computer interaction. Tesler has worked at Xerox PARC, Apple Computer, Amazon.com, and Yahoo!...
. It drew heavily on earlier research by Alan Kay

Alan Kay

Alan Curtis Kay is an United States computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and Window graphical user interface design....
, who had previously developed 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. While the Dynabook was a concept for a transportable computer that was impossible to implement with available technology, the NoteTaker was intended to show what could be done.

The computer employed what was then highly advanced technology, including a built-in monochrome

Monochrome

Monochrome comes from the Greek language ?????????? , meaning ?of one color?, which is a combination of ????? , meaning ?alone? or ?solitary?, and ????a , meaning ?color?....
display monitor

Computer display

A visual display unit, often called simply a monitor or display, is a piece of electrical equipment which displays images generated from the video output of devices such as computers, without producing a permanent record....
, a floppy disk drive and a mouse. It had 128 kB

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....
of RAM, then a very large amount, and used a 1 MHz CPU

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....
. It used a version of the Smalltalk

Smalltalk

Smalltalk is an Object-oriented programming, Type system, reflection computer programming programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human?computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist learning, at PARC by Al...
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....
that was written for the Xerox Alto

Xerox Alto

The Xerox Alto was an early personal computer developed at Xerox PARC in 1973. It was the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and graphical user interface ....
computer, which pioneered the graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
.

The NoteTaker fitted into a case similar in form to that of a portable sewing machine

Sewing machine

A sewing machine is a textile machine used to stitch fabric or other material together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies....
; the keyboard

Keyboard (computing)

In computing, a keyboard is an input device, partially modeled after the Typewriter#Keyboard layout, which uses an arrangement of buttons or Push-button, which act as mechanical levers or electronic switches....
folded out from the bottom to reveal the monitor and floppy drive. The form factor was later used on the highly successful "luggable" computers, including the Osborne 1

Osborne 1

Compaq Portable

The Compaq Portable was the first product in the Compaq portable series to be commercially available under the Compaq brand . It was the first "100%" IBM PC compatible personal computer not manufactured by IBM, and also the first IBM PC compatible portable computer....
. However, these later models were about half as heavy as the NoteTaker, which weighed 22 kg

Kilogram

The kilogram or kilogrammeThe spelling kilogram is used by the International Committee for Weights and Measures and the U.S....
(48 lb

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass is a Units of measurement of massused in the Imperial unit, United States customary units and other systems of measurement....
). Had the NoteTaker been produced commercially, it would likely have cost in excess of USD

United States dollar

The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States and was defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 to be between 371 and 416 grains of silver ....
50,000.

External links

from the Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum

The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, when The Computer Museum, Boston sent the majority of its historical collection to Moffett Federal Airfield, so that TCM could concentrate on computing-related exhibits for children....
.
, with an article on the NoteTaker.