The Grid Compass (written ''GRiD'' by its manufacturer GRiD Systems Corporation) is one of the first

laptop computer A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

History

Development began in 1979, and the main buyer was the U.S. government. NASA used it on the Space Shuttle during the early 1980s, as it was powerful, lightweight, and compact. The military Special Forces also purchased the machine, as it could be used by paratroopers in combat. Along with the

Gavilan SC The Gavilan SC is a laptop computer and was the first ever to be marketed as a "laptop". History The brainchild of Gavilan Computer Corp. founder Manuel (Manny) Fernandez, the Gavilan was introduced in May 1983, at approximately the same time a ...

and Sharp PC-5000 released the following year, the GRiD Compass established much of the basic design of subsequent laptop computers, although the laptop concept itself owed much to the

Dynabook The KiddiComp concept, envisioned by Alan Kay in 1968 while a PhD candidate, and later developed and described as the Dynabook in his 1972 proposal "A personal computer for children of all ages", outlines the requirements for a conceptual portabl ...

project developed at

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

from the late 1960s. The Compass company subsequently earned significant returns on its

patent rights A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

as its innovations became commonplace.

Competitors

The portable

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 on- ...

computer sold at around the same time as the GRiD, was more affordable and more popular, and ran the popular

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

operating system. But, unlike the Compass, the Osborne was not a laptop and lacked the Compass's refinement and small size.

Models

The Compass ran its own operating system, GRiD-OS. Its specialized software and high price (–) meant that it was limited to specialized applications.

Compass

The initial model, the 1101, was introduced in April 1982; The 1100 model designation were never released commercially, but featured in some pre-release marketing material.. The computer was designed by

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advan ...

Bill Moggridge William Grant Moggridge, RDI (25 June 1943 – 8 September 2012) was an English designer, author and educator who cofounded the design company IDEO and was director of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. He was a pionee ...

Design

The design used a clamshell case (where the screen folds flat to the rest of the computer when closed), which was made from a magnesium alloy. The computer featured an

Intel 8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowi ...

processor Processor may refer to: Computing Hardware * Processor (computing) **Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program *** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...

, a

electroluminescent display Electroluminescent Displays (ELDs) are a type of flat panel display created by sandwiching a layer of electroluminescent material such as GaAs between two layers of conductors. When current flows, the layer of material emits radiation in the form ...

, 340-

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix ''kilo'' as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quantiti ...

magnetic bubble memory, and a

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 ...

. Devices such as

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

s and floppy drives could be connected via the

IEEE-488 IEEE 488 is a short-range digital communications 8-bit parallel multi-master interface bus specification developed by Hewlett-Packard as HP-IB (Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus). It subsequently became the subject of several standards, and is ...

I/O (also known as GPIB or General Purpose Interface Bus). This port made it possible to connect multiple devices to the addressable device bus. It weighed (). The power input is ~ AC, , .

Compass II

The Compass II was released in 1984; known as 1121, 1129, 1131 and 1139 models.

References

External links

* * *
InfoWorld Aug 2, 1982

InfoWorld Nov 8, 1982
* * * * {{GRiD Laptops History of computing hardware RadioShack Products introduced in 1982