History of the Laptop, The

Technology has evolved far beyond the mainframes of the late 1950s. In 1949, a Popular Mechanics magazine declared that all computers in the future would weigh no more than one and a half tons. Little did they know that computers would become portable featherweight machines popularly known as laptops. Naysayers dispute the origin of portable computers; however, most agree that it first became feasible in the 1970s. In 1968, Alan Kay of Xerox PARC brainstormed the idea of a “personal, portable information manipulator.” Kay proposed his idea further in the abstract paper entitled “the Dynabook.” This became the hallmark and inspiration of the first commercially available portable computers.