The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
The Osborne 1 is a historic computer that was first introduced in 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It is considered to be one of the first portable computers and was designed by Adam Osborne, who was a pioneer in the personal computer industry.
The Osborne 1 was a groundbreaking device for its time, as it was the first mass-produced portable computer that was small and light enough to be carried by an individual. It weighed around 23 pounds and had a small built-in 5-inch display. The computer also came with a detachable keyboard and two floppy disk drives.
The Osborne 1 was powered by a Zilog Z80 processor and came with 64 kilobytes of memory. It ran the CP/M operating system and was capable of running popular software applications of the time, such as WordStar and VisiCalc.
The Osborne 1 was very popular among business professionals and was used for tasks such as word processing, accounting, and database management. It was also popular among journalists and writers, who found it to be a useful tool for writing and editing on the go.
Despite its early success, the Osborne Computer Corporation ultimately went bankrupt in 1985, due in part to the company’s premature announcement of a successor to the Osborne 1. Nonetheless, the Osborne 1 remains an important landmark in the history of personal computing and is remembered as a groundbreaking device that helped pave the way for modern laptops and mobile computing.