The WS-1 was a laptop manufactured by the Japanese computer company Ampere, Inc. Unveiled in June 1984 as the BIG.APL and later released as the WS-1 in November 1985, the laptop was noted by journalists for its striking case design—rendered by Kumeo Tamura, one of the principal designers of the

Datsun 240Z The Nissan S30 (sold in Japan as the Nissan Fairlady Z and in other markets as the Datsun 240Z, then later as the 260Z and 280Z) is the first generation of Z GT 3-door two-seat coupés, produced by Nissan Motors, Ltd. of Japan from 1969 until ...

. Also noted was its early use of

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

microprocessor and the decision to use APL as its programming environment of choice.

Development and specifications

Ampere, Inc., a Japanese computer systems company founded by Takashi Kusanagi in the early 1980s, first announced the WS-1 in June 1984 under the prototype name ''BIG.APL''. The WS-1 weighs and occupies a footprint of . Technology journalists noted the laptop's striking,

airfoil An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is the cross-sectional shape of an object whose motion through a gas is capable of generating significant lift, such as a wing, a sail, or the blades of propeller, rotor, or turbine. ...

-esque case design, rendered by Japanese industrial designer Kumeo Tamura—better known as a principal behind the

coupé. Powering the WS-1 is the HD68000—a

second-source In the electronics industry, a second source is a company that is licensed to manufacture and sell components originally designed by another company (the first source). It is common for engineers and purchasers to avoid components that are only av ...

version of

's 32-bit

microprocessor—manufactured by

Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...

and running at a clock speed of 8 MHz. The laptop is also designed around

VMEbus VMEbus (Versa Module Europa or Versa Module Eurocard bus) is a computer bus standard, originally developed for the Motorola 68000 line of CPUs, but later widely used for many applications and standardized by the IEC as ANSI/IEEE 1014-1987. I ...

, an open-standard computer bus built upon the 68000. Both the 68000 and VMEbus were seldom used by laptops at the time of its release. The WS-1's VMEbus accommodates expansions via a port on the back, allowing the user to connect the laptop to external devices including hard drives, floppy drives, and further RAM. Ampere themselves sold a

3.5-inch floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined wi ...

drive exclusively for use with the WS-1. Also present on the WS-1 are two serial ports and a

Centronics Centronics Data Computer Corporation was an American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name, the Centronics connector. History Foundations Centronics began as a division o ...

parallel port, a 300-baud

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

, and a

microcassette The Microcassette (often written generically as microcassette) is an audio storage medium, introduced by Olympus in 1969. It has the same width of magnetic tape as the Compact Cassette but in a cassette roughly one quarter the size. By using t ...

deck. The microcassette deck allows the user to store both programs, data, and voice recordings. Both saving programs and data to cassette was handled and voice recording was handled by the laptop's built-in operating system, Big.DOS. The WS-1 includes a built-in speaker and microphohe, allowing the laptop to be used as a handset, an

answering machine An answering machine, answerphone or message machine, also known as telephone messaging machine (or TAM) in the UK and some Commonwealth countries, ansaphone or ansafone (from a trade name), or telephone answering device (TAD), was used for a ...

, a call recorder and transcription machine. The WS-1 sports three expansion cartridge slots, allowing the user to equip the machine with more RAM, with aftermarket software on

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * R ...

s, or with custom-burned

EPROM An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored data after a power s ...

software. On its announcement, the WS-1 was slated to come in multiple SKUs of varying amounts of

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

on board, with a 1-MB ceiling via RAM expansion cartridges in increments of 64 KB. The laptop was later manufactured as a single configuration set at 64 KB, expandable via the aforementioned cartridges to a lower RAM ceiling of 512 KB. While Ampere designed the WS-1's hardware in Japan, they turned to the United States for software development. The company aimed WS-1 at users of APL, a programming language that uses graphic symbols to represent most functions and operators. To this end, the WS-1's 70-key

QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...

keyboard includes a second layer with APL symbols, activated via a

function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, function ...

actuated in tandem with the desired symbol. The WS-1's included APL programming environment of choice is Big.APL, an implementation of APL 68000 (itself a derivative of IBM's APL.SV). Big.APL runs on top of the laptop's built-in disk operating system, Big.DOS. Big.DOS also features a full-screen

line editor In computing, a line editor is a text editor in which each editing command applies to one or more complete lines of text designated by the user. Line editors predate screen-based text editors and originated in an era when a computer operator typic ...

, a

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

, a spreadsheet application, a modem utility, and a database program, all running in a windowing

text-based user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

with multitasking capability. Both Big.DOS and Big.APL were designed by Philip Van Cleave. Ampere originally designed the WS-1 with an abridged 80-column-16-line (480 × 128 pixel)

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but in ...

. They later expanded it to 25 columns (480 × 200 pixel).

John J. Anderson John J. Anderson or J.J. Anderson (November 8, 1956 – October 17, 1989) was a writer and editor covering computers and technology. The New Jersey native was Executive Editor of '' Computer Shopper'' and ''Atari Explorer''. At the time of his ...

, writing in ''

Creative Computing ''Creative Computing'' was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format th ...

'', called the display an improvement over that included with the earlier

Data General/One The Data General/One (DG-1) was a laptop introduced in 1984 by Data General. Description The nine-pound battery-powered 1984 Data General/One ran MS-DOS and had dual 3.5" diskettes, a 79-key full-stroke keyboard, 128 KB to 512 KB of RAM, and a m ...

laptop: " tremely easy to read, even in less than optimal lighting conditions".

Sales and legacy

Ampere delivered the first units of the WS-1 in Japan in November 1985. Workspace Computer, Inc., of

Torrance, California Torrance is a city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area located in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city is part of what is known as the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay region of the m ...

, secured the rights to resell the WS-1 in the United States, while Nissei, a subsidiary of Nissan, secured the rights to resell it in the United Kingdom. The WS-1 reportedly never shipped in the United States, according to ''

Jalopnik G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company that runs ''Gizmodo'', ''Kotaku'', ''Jalopnik'', ''Deadspin'', ''Lifehacker'', ''Jezebel'', ''The Root'', ''The A.V. Club'', ''The Takeout'', ''The Onion'', and ''The Inventory''. History G ...

'', on account of the laptop failing to meet the

FCC Class A Code of Federal Regulations, 'Title 47, Part 15(47 CFR 15) is an oft-quoted part of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rulemaking, rules and regulations regarding license, unlicensed transmission (telecom), transmissions. It is a part of Tit ...

RF emissions compliance. Due to its unique styling, use of APL, and ties to the Datsun 240Z, the WS-1 is now a collector's item.

References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em Computer-related introductions in 1985 Early laptops 68000-based home computers APL programming language family