Five years later, GRiD was bought again, by Irvine, Calif.–based AST Research, which was itself acquired by Samsung in 1996. Hawkins went on to invent the PalmPilot and Treo, though not at GRiD.Īmid the rapidly consolidating personal computer industry, GRiD Systems was bought by Tandy Corp. In 1989, this work culminated in the GRiDPad 1900, often regarded as the first commercially successful tablet computer. At GRiD, Hawkins led the development of a pen- or stylus-based computer. He joined the company in 1982, left for school in 1986, and returned as vice president of research. Not a company to rest on its laurels, GRiD continued to be a pioneer in portable computers, especially thanks to the work of Jeff Hawkins. The company went public in 1981, and the following year they launched the GRiD Compass. John Ellenby and Glenn Edens, both from Xerox PARC, and David Paulson had founded GRiD Systems Corp. The GRiDPad 1900 Was a First in Tablet Computing NASA’s trust in the computer was not misplaced: Reportedly, the GRiD flying aboard Challenger survived the January 1986 crash. The Compass/SPOC remained a regular on shuttle missions into the early 1990s. The Compass featured prominently in Aliens, Wall Street, and Pulp Fiction. Neither NASA nor GRiD Systems officially connected the acronym to a certain pointy-eared Vulcan on Star Trek, but the GRiD Compass became a Hollywood staple whenever a character had to show off wealth and tech savviness. The GRiD also featured a backup reentry program, just in case all of the IBMs at Mission Control failed.įor its maiden voyage, the laptop received the code name SPOC (short for Shuttle Portable On-Board Computer). Astronauts used the feature to plan upcoming photo shoots of specific locations. Special graphical software displayed the orbiter’s position relative to Earth and the line of daylight/darkness. The software modifications were more significant. Creighton poses with a GRiD Compass aboard the space shuttle The hardware adaptations for microgravity were relatively minor: a new cord to plug into the shuttle’s power supply and a small fan to compensate for the lack of convective cooling in space.Īstronaut John O. The first GRiD Compass launched into space on 28 November 1983 aboard the space shuttle Columbia. military, both of which valued its sturdy design and didn’t blink at the cost. The rugged laptop soon found a home with NASA and the U.S. The GRiD’s Sturdy Design Made It Ideal for Space The built-in 1200-baud modem was designed to connect to a central computer at the GRiD Systems’ headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., from which additional applications could be downloaded. Accordingly, it came preloaded with a text editor, a spreadsheet, a plotter, a terminal emulator, a database management system, and other business software. With a price tag of US $8,150 (about $23,000 today), the Compass wasn’t intended for consumers but rather for business executives. Floppy drives and hard disks were available as peripherals. The Compass also included a 16-bit 8086 microprocessor and up to 512 KB of RAM. The metal case added to the laptop’s reputation for ruggedness. Indeed, sales representatives claimed they would drop the computer in front of prospective buyers to show off its durability.īut bubble memory also tends to run hot, so the exterior case was designed out of a magnesium alloy to make it a heat sink. With no rotating disks or moving parts, solid-state bubble memory worked well in settings where a laptop might, say, take a tumble. The computer had 384 kilobytes of nonvolatile bubble memory, a magnetic storage system that showed promise in the 1970s and ’80s. Some people call the Compass the first truly portable laptop computer. But compared with, say, the Osborne 1 or the Compaq Portable, both of which had a heavier CRT screen and tipped the scales at 10.7 kg and 13 kg, respectively, the Compass was feather light. About the size of a large three-ring binder, it weighed 4.5 kilograms (10 pounds). Its 21.6-centimer plasma screen could display 25 lines of up to 128 characters in a high-contrast amber that the company claimed could be “viewed from any angle and under any lighting conditions.”īy today’s standards, the GRiD was a bulky beast of a machine. The Graphical Retrieval Information Display (GRiD) Compass had a unique clamshell design, in which the monitor folded down over the keyboard. The GRiD Compass Was the First Laptop to Feature a Clamshell Design The Commodore 64 came to market in the United States. The BBC Micro was introduced in the United Kingdom, as was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The year 1982 was a notable one in personal computing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |