World’s first laptop

THEY may only be from 1981, but this piece of kit and the amazing adverts that try to sell it show just how quickly things move in the technology world.

The hardware is the Osborne 1, widely acknowledged as the first laptop computer - and a machine very different from today’s laptops and iPads (which was first introduced in 2010)

It boasts a five inch screen, dual 5.25 inch floppy drives, all crammed into a case that weighed a back-breaking 24lbs - all for just over £1300.

The machine was given a series of glossy adverts as Osborne and its founder Adam Osborne tried to revolutionise the computer industry.

It was introduced in 1981 at the West Coast Computer Fair.

It had 64 Kb of memory, a 5inch display screen and had two floppy disk drives and a full sized keyboard. However, it was rather more bulky than today’s laptop, weighing 24 pounds.

It came with a suite of software using a now obsolete operating system called CP/M operating system.

It sold for $1,795 which included Micropro’s Wordstar software.

The machine proved extremely popular, and in 1982, more than 125,000 Osborne computers were sold. However, as the computer world moved over to creating IBM compatible machines, Osborne struggled to produce a followup, despite attempts to make a machine called ‘Vixen’.