Adam Osborne (March 6, 1939 – March 18, 2003) was a British author, book and

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere. He introduced the

Osborne 1 The Osborne 1 is the first commercially successful portable computer, released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighs , cost US$1,795, and runs the CP/M 2.2 operating system. It is powered from a wall socket, as it has no ...

, the first commercially successful portable computer.

Early life

Osborne was born to British parents in

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estima ...

, Thailand on March 6, 1939. His father, Arthur Osborne, was a teacher of eastern religion and philosophy and a lecturer in English at

Chulalongkorn University Chulalongkorn University (CU, th, จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย, ), nicknamed Chula ( th, จุฬาฯ), is a public and autonomous research university in Bangkok, Thailand. The university was originally fo ...

. All members of the family were fluent in the

Tamil language Tamil (; ' , ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian territory of Pudu ...

. He spent

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

in southern India, with his mother. He attended Presentation Convent School in Kodaikanal until Class 6. In 1950, the Osborne family moved to England. From the age of 11, he was educated at a Catholic boarding school in Warwickshire but from 1954 to 1957 was a pupil at the grammar school

Leamington College for Boys North Leamington School (NLS) is a mixed, non-selective, comprehensive school for students aged 11 to 18 years located at the northeastern edge of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. It is rated as a ''good'' school by Ofsted, and has 6.7 ...

, where he played chess. He graduated with a degree in

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

from the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

in 1961, and received his PhD from the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 mas ...

in 1968. It was while living in the United States that he learned to write computer code. He obtained a position as a chemical engineer with Shell Oil, in California, but was dismissed.

Publishing

Osborne was a pioneer in the computer book field, founding a company in 1972 that specialized in easy-to-read computer manuals. By 1977, Osborne & Associates had 40 titles in its catalogue. In 1979, it was bought by

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes refere ...

and continued as an imprint of McGraw-Hill, "McGraw-Hill/Osborne". He also wrote several books. One of them, ''An Introduction To Microcomputers'', sold 300,000 copies.

Computers

Osborne was known to frequent the

Homebrew Computer Club The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that asp ...

's meetings around 1975. He created the first commercially available

portable computer A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another and included a display and keyboard together, with a single plug, much like later desktop computers called '' all-in-ones'' (AIO), that integrate the s ...

, the

, released in April 1981. It weighed 24.5 pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795—just over half the cost of a computer from other manufacturers with comparable features—and ran the popular CP/M 2.2

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

. It was designed to fit under an airline seat. At its peak,

Osborne Computer Corporation The Osborne Computer Corporation (OCC) was a pioneering maker of portable computers. It was located in the Silicon Valley of the southern San Francisco Bay Area in California. Osborne was one of the first personal computing pioneers to understand fully that there was a wide market of buyers who were not computing hobbyists: the Osborne 1 included word processing and spreadsheet software. This was at a time when IBM would not bundle hardware and software with their PCs, selling separately the operating systems, monitors, and even cables for the monitor. Adam Osborne's experience in the computer industry gave his new company credibility. Osborne Computer Corporation advertisements compared Adam Osborne's influence on the personal computer market to

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that mi ...

's influence on transportation. It is said that in 1983, Osborne bragged about two advanced new computers his company was developing. These statements destroyed consumer demand for the Osborne 1, and the resulting inventory glut forced Osborne Computer to file for bankruptcy on September 13, 1983. This phenomenon, a pre-announcement of a new product causing a catastrophic collapse in demand for older ones, became known as the

Osborne effect The Osborne effect is a social phenomenon of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current, soon-to-be-obsolete product as an unexpected drawback of a company's announcing a future product prematurely. It is an example of cannibalizati ...

, but according to some new sources, the real reasons for Osborne Computer's bankruptcy were management errors and insufficient cash flow.

Hypergrowth

After Osborne Computer's collapse, Adam Osborne wrote a best-selling memoir of his experience, ''Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation'', with

John C. Dvorak John C. Dvorak (; born 1952) is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a regular columnist in a variety of magazines. He was vice president of Mevio ...

, which was published in 1984.

Software

In 1984, Osborne founded Paperback Software International Ltd., a company that specialized in inexpensive computer software. Its advertisements featured Osborne himself, arguing that if telephone companies applied the same logic to their pricing as software companies, a telephone would cost $600. One of its products was VP-Planner, an inexpensive clone of

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...

, which led to

legal action In legal terminology, a complaint is any formal legal document that sets out the facts and legal reasons (see: cause of action) that the filing party or parties (the plaintiff(s)) believes are sufficient to support a claim against the party ...

. In 1987, Lotus sued Paperback Software. As a result of the lawsuit, consumer confidence waned for Paperback Software, and its revenues dropped 80% by 1989, preventing the firm from getting venture capital for expansion. In February 1990, the case went to court and on June 28, the court ruled that Paperback Software's product, by copying Lotus 1-2-3's

look and feel In software design, the look and feel of a graphical user interface comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces (the "look"), as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxe ...

menu interface, violated Lotus's

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

. Osborne stepped down from Paperback Software the same year. Paperback's database application,

VP-Info VP-Info is a database language and compiler for the personal computer. VP-Info was a competitor to the Clipper and dBase applications in the late 1980s and 1990s. VP-Info runs on MS-DOS, DR-DOS and the PC-MOS/386 operating system. The last rel ...

continued to sell well for many more years, and acquired a second life as Sharkbase. His final venture, in 1992, was to found the company Noetics Software, to work on

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

Personal life and death

Osborne was a member of Mensa. He married – and divorced – twice, firstly in the mid-1960s, to Cynthia Geddes, an American, and later to Barbara Burdick (Zelnick). Osborne had three children.John Markoff/New York Times. "Adam Osborne 64 Dies Was Pioneer of Portable PC New York Times Websit

/ref> Both former wives and all his children survived him. In 1992, Osborne returned to India in declining health, suffering from a brain disorder that triggered frequent minor strokes. He died in his sleep on March 18, 2003, in

Kodaikanal Kodaikanal () is a hill station which is located in Dindigul district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Its name in the Tamil language means "The Gift of the Forest". Kodaikanal is referred to as the "Princess of Hill stations" and has a long ...

, India, aged 64.

References

External links

Adam Osborne, pioneer of PCs for people: dead at 64

The Register – Portable computer pioneer Adam Osborne dies

The Computer Chronicles (broadcast in 1984) – Adam Osborne is interviewed by Stewart Cheifet and Gary Kildall
{{DEFAULTSORT:Osborne, Adam 1939 births 2003 deaths Computer hardware engineers English emigrants to India English emigrants to the United States Alumni of the University of Birmingham British Hindus 20th-century British businesspeople University of Delaware alumni Mensans British technology writers