In the early 1980s, portable computers  were either one of two categories.

Big and functional. Or small and basic. And  while there were successes within each category,  

you can hardly identify them  as today's modern laptops.

Then in 1985, the Japanese company  Toshiba releases a ground-breaking  

laptop PC that brings it all  together for the first time.

In today's video, let us look back at the  first commercially successful laptop PC:  

The Toshiba T1100 and its successors.

## Beginning So in the first of the two categories,

we had these battery-powered  handheld computers called “palmtops”.

These were extremely portable and ran  on AA batteries. Notable examples of  

these small palmtops include the Epson HX-20,  

released in July 1982 and marketed by  Epson as the first handheld computer.

When it arrived on US shores, Business Week hailed  the little computer and its 50 hour battery life  

as heralding the "fourth revolution in personal  computing". It sold a quarter million units.

Another palmtop was the TRS-80 Model 100. The  Model 100 - do not confuse it with the Model  

1 - was a relatively small device produced  by Kyocera and powered by four AA batteries.

Tandy Corporation licensed it and sold  it exclusively in their Radio Shack  

stores for about $800 or about $2,700  today. A pretty good price back then.  

It was well-reviewed by journalists,  who used it as a portable text editor.

So these were fairly popular but size and  power issues placed heavy limitations on  

their use. And "real" business people  refused to adopt them unless they were  

somewhat compatible with the IBM PC ecosystem -  so they can run applications like Lotus 1-2-3.

## Luggables

And then on the other end of the spectrum,  the luggables. No, not Lunchables.

These computers were fairly large and  heavy - about 12 kilograms or so. And  

since they lacked a battery they needed to  be connected to a wall plug. But they were  

portable in the sense that you can unplug  it and stick it underneath a plane seat.

The first commercially successful luggable  was the Osborne 1, released in 1981 by the  

Osborne Computer Corporation. Running an early  microcomputer operating system called CP/M 2.2,  

it sold quite well - generating sales  of 10,000 units a month at its peak.

However the Osborne 1 looks nothing like  the laptops of today. It resembles more  

a chonk field radio than a computer. It  didn't have that clamshell form factor.

That was pioneered by the GRiD Compass, which  some credit as the first clamshell laptop.

Developed for NASA and costing $8,000  or about $27,000 today, the Compass was  

nowhere near a mass market device. It also ran  its own custom operating system and software.

The big breakout came a bit later  in 1983 with the Compaq Portable.  

The first luggable to be perfectly  compatible with the IBM PC ecosystem,  

the Portable sold like gangbusters  and launched Compaq to dominance.

So you had these two categories. Palmtops  and luggables. Good in their own way,  

but neither perfect. Why not create something  with the best of both? A PC-compatible,  

clamshell laptop. Small and portable with  a battery. Who would be the one to make it?

## Toshiba

Tetsuya Mizoguchi first joined Toshiba in 1963.

A tall, big-boned man with a wrestler's frame,  

Mizoguchi proved himself to be a natural  leader in Toshiba's computer division.

In 1977, Mizoguchi reads a translated  version of Alan Kay's famous screed  

"Personal Dynamic Media". Kay is  the legendary computer scientist  

who broke new ground in user interfaces for  the computer whilst at Xerox's PARC R&D lab.

In that paper, Kay introduces a  product concept that he called  

the Dynabook - a computer with the power  and portability to help everyone learn.

The idea inspires Mizoguchi to produce  an early PC prototype called the T-400,  

running the BASIC language and an  Intel 8-bit CPU. Unfortunately it  

remained a prototype with  only a few ever being made.

In 1981, Toshiba produces a line of  desktop PCs called the Pasopia. The  

name comes from a combination of "personal"  and "utopia". Powered by a Zilog Z-80 CPU,  

the Pasopia shipped with a  BASIC interpreter, 64K of RAM,  

and an liquid crystal display capable of  showing eight lines of 40 characters each.

Unfortunately, the Pasopia-1 arrived at  the Japanese market too late to dislodge  

NEC's PC-8001 and PC-98 operating system  - which had debuted a few years earlier.  

PC-98 would go on to dominate Japan’s  PC industry for over a decade.

A year later, Toshiba tried to sell the  Pasopia line of computers in the United  

States, marketing it as the Toshiba  T200. Unfortunately that computer's  

incompatibility with IBM's PC ecosystem  meant that it was dead on arrival.

Toshiba invests substantial resources  into a followup called the Pasopia 7,  

a machine oriented more to enthusiasts. Released  in 1983, it also fails to make a significant mark.

## Origin of the Idea

Whoever first came up with the idea  for the T1100 is rather murky. Here  

is the best timeline that I can put  together based on multiple sources.

After two failures in a row, Toshiba's management  prepares to leave the PC space entirely. However  

the company's head of Electronic Equipment  Division in the International Business Department,  

Kiichi Hataya, convinces his bosses to stay  as an Original Equipment Manufacturer or OEM.

Being an OEM means that Toshiba produces the  hardware for another company. Kind of like how  

Kyocera produced the TRS-80 Model 100 device  for Tandy to sell in their Radio Shack stores.

So Hayata travels to the United States to search  for potential OEM clients. No clients emerge but  

during his travels, he writes a report  to his bosses about producing a small,  

IBM-compatible computer that  can fold up and sit on a desk.

This need is reinforced by  a second US trip. In 1983,  

three Toshiba executives go to Los Angeles to  work with the consulting firm McKinsey on a  

project called "Brighter Blue". The project  yielded a new, promising market position:

> "Our plan was for a clamshell-type transportable  PC with an LCD [screen] and IBM compatibility."

## The Secret Mission

The issue was that Toshiba's management refused to  

spare any more resources for  another Toshiba-branded PC.

This made things tricky for Mizoguchi  and his boss, the newly appointed General  

Manager of the Computer Business Division,  Masaichi Koga. After having two requests  

for money and engineers rejected by  Toshiba leadership, they secretly  

diverted resources from various military  projects to fund a task force to build it.

This could have gotten them all fired. But the  factory in which they were working was in Ome,  

Japan - geographically distant from the  Toshiba headquarters. There is a phrase  

in Chinese that comes to mind here: 天高皇帝遠.  Heaven is high and the emperor is far away.

And despite the losses in PCs, Toshiba's  larger computer division was making good  

money from selling office minicomputers  and optical character recognition  

software for the Japanese language. Those  profits gave the division more leeway.

The task force was led by Ginzo Yamazaki.  The prototype was completed in August 1984.  

It had a CMOS Intel 80C88 chip, built-in disk  drive and monochrome LCD screen about 640x400  

pixels large. You can adjust the angle of the  screen - even folding it back all the way.

The whole thing weighed about 4.1  kilograms and was about 31.1 cm by  

6.6 cm by 30.5 cm large. So about 4-5  magazines stacked on top of each other.  

You can also imagine a 16-inch MacBook  Pro but with twice the thickness.

## Nishida

The project gets a major boost forward  with the entry of Atsutoshi Nishida.

Nishida was then Toshiba's European PC  sales manager. He has an interesting story,  

falling in love with an Iranian woman during  university and following her to Iran where  

he joined a Toshiba affiliate.  He worked his way up from there.

At this time, Nishida's product portfolio  was made up of just PC peripherals and  

printers. He occasionally goes to Tokyo  to see new products at the Ome Factory,  

and it is during one of those meetings  that he sees a prototype of the laptop.

He immediately recognizes its potential for his  

sales portfolio and asks the  brass to produce it, saying:

> Make me seven prototypes that  I can show around Europe and I  

will commit to sell 10,000 units the first year

HQ relents and allows the seven prototypes to  be made, but Nishida can only get the money for  

the project by diverting it from his larger  international sales and marketing budget.  

He takes the seven prototypes to IBM dealers  in Europe with the sales pitch being:

> Desktop from IBM and laptop from  Toshiba! These are complementary products,  

and there is no competition between them. In fact,  

now you have the opportunity of selling  two computers to the same customer!

There was one more challenge for him. In  order to make the T1100 as small as it was,  

they had to adopt a smaller  size floppy disk: 3.5 inches.

The problem was that the software industry  had standardized around a larger 5.25 inch  

floppy disk. And without software like Lotus  1-2-3, a computer would be dead on arrival.

So Nishida goes to Lotus's European offices in  London to ask them to offer 3.5 inch floppies.  

He was immediately rejected. Undeterred, he  goes back three more times. On the fourth time,  

Nishida recalls in a 2005  interview with Amy Bennett:

> By my fourth visit he was fed up with my  persistence ... He told me he would talk to  

an engineer as a personal favor, not anything  official. I next visited Lotus in my personal  

capacity and the man migrated Lotus 1-2-3 to  3.5 inch floppy disks. It worked perfectly.

Nishida then goes to the other big  software vendor of the day, Ashton-Tate,  

which produced a database software  called dBase. A competitor to Lotus,  

Ashton-Tate quickly agreed once they  heard that their rival was doing it.

Meanwhile, the Toshiba team was  working hard to test the hundreds  

of MS-DOS software packages on  the laptop. Getting the popular  

Microsoft Flight Simulator program to work  was said to have been particularly tricky.

## The T1100

Toshiba first presented the  T1100 laptop in Germany at  

the MICRO-COMPUTER Trade Fair in January 1985.

It hit the German market a few  months later. And right off the bat,  

the laptop made a splash with customers  and critics. Reviewers noted its thinness,  

good specs, and that it ran the MS-DOS  operating system. One reviewer wrote:

> Wow just like desktop IBM! ... I've seen Flight  Simulator running on the LCD and on a monitor,  

and hundreds of other programs also are  claimed to run (including Lotus 1-2-3).

> The price starts at under $3000  — what chance can IBM have if it  

reaches the market later, and more expensively?

Other reviewers recognized the incredible social  potential that a portable IBM-compatible laptop  

held for working life. An Australian columnist  named Gareth Powell noted in August 1985:

> [The Toshiba T1100] is revolutionary  - in a quiet way ... almost every single  

component it contains is available  in one form or another in computers  

which have been on the market for some time ...

> It is the way these components  have been assembled, and the way  

in which ... the machine will be  used, which makes it revolutionary

Powell then explains that the T1100's  portability is so game-changing because  

now it is possible for business executives to take  

their work home with them. It spares  them from staying at the office late.

The laptop hit American shores in  November 1985 with an exhibition  

at the big Comdex trade show. It was  made available for sale in early 1986.

Nishida spent 1985 promoting the T1100  to various companies. By year's end,  

Nishida missed his promised 10,000 unit sales by  just 230 units. But he sold those soon afterwards.

## New Competition

The T1100's success brought new  competitors into the market.

In early 1986, Compaq released the Compaq  Portable II. They famously wanted to do  

their own laptop but would not do so  until 1988. So the Portable II remained  

more of a high-end luggable workstation  that didn't compete in the same space.

But Zenith, the former consumer electronics  company, did go hard with their Z-181,  

a PC-compatible clamshell laptop that boasted an  

adjustable backlit-LCD screen.  Uniquely enough, it glowed blue.

IBM also released their own laptop PC,  

the Convertible. It also had the smaller 3.5  inch floppy drive and an internal battery.

But despite being a real-deal IBM system,  the Convertible’s high price and non-backlit  

panel made it a tough sell. This first laptop  failed to make a major impact on the market.

## The T2100 and T3100

To keep up with Zenith, IBM, and others,  Toshiba quickly expanded their product lineup.

In 1986, there was the T1100 Plus,  

which featured a small CPU speed bump.  It sold extremely well at the start.

Toshiba struggled to keep up with demand -  with backlogs stretching up to six months long.

And reviewers liked it. Though  I did read an amusing complaint  

letter pointing out that the function keys  on the keyboard were set backwards on two  

rows - snaking from top right to  bottom left. That is indeed demented.

Toshiba also added high and middle tier models.  Many customers found the T1100's LCD screen hard  

to read, leading to a few reviewers  recommending the blue-screened Z-181.

So also in 1986, Toshiba introduced the  high-end T3100. It was compatible with  

IBM's new PC/AT computer and changed  the screen from an LCD to a yellow-ish  

gas-plasma screen. It also had a 10-megabyte  hard disk drive, a first for a laptop.

The screen was indeed far more readable in light,  

but its power-hungry nature meant that  the computer had to be plugged into the  

wall. And at 6.8 kilograms or 15  pounds, it cannot go far anyway.

Toshiba also brought out a mid-tier T2100,  

which never reached the United States  but did well in Europe and Australia.

## The T1000 In late 1987, Toshiba then released the T1000,

which cemented the company's  place in laptop history.

The story behind this one is a bit  interesting. In April 1987, the US  

tariffed certain Japanese imports for allegedly  violating a US-Japan semiconductor agreement.

Two of the tariffed items were 16-bit desktops  and laptops with LCD screens capable of handling  

16-bits. This effectively doubled the price of  the T1100 Plus, making it unviable in the market.

So Toshiba cleverly exploited a loophole by  putting a 4.77-megahertz Intel 80C88 CPU into  

the T1000. An interesting choice  because while the chip was 16-bit,  

it communicated through an older 8-bit bus  - exempting the laptop from the tariff.

What people most noticed about this computer  however was its size and functionality. At  

just 2.9 kilograms (6.4 pounds) and 12 by  11 by 2 inches large - about the size of  

a large textbook - the Toshiba T1000 was  the smallest MS-DOS laptop yet released.

Moreover, it had a panoply of connectors, ports,  

and drives. An internal nickel-cadmium  battery provided about five hours of  

working life. And best of all, it was very  cheap - priced at $1,200, or $3,300 today.

One can justifiably call it the Macbook  Air of its day. It wasn't perfect - people  

noted the tradeoffs that had to be  made for portability - but reviewers  

and enthusiasts could not believe that  Toshiba was able to stuff so much into it.

Toshiba marketed it as a "second" device  to businesspeople, but you could use it  

as your primary. And it sold very well, though  precise sales numbers are not publicly available.

A reviewer at Byte Magazine said  it was the first laptop that he's  

seen to be better for writing  than the old Tandy Model 100.

Its users still remember it fondly to this day.  Many years later in 2006, the editors of PC World  

Magazine declared it the 17th best PC of all  time - recognizing its ground-breaking status.

Sales of the T1000 and its variants  like the SE helped Toshiba capture  

40% of the US and Europe laptop  markets in 1987. And in 1988,  

they retained 38% and 21% market share despite  a new wave of competition. Hasta la vista baby.

## DynaBook

After shipping the T1100, Mizoguchi and his team  go back to Alan Kay's vision of the Dynabook.

Inspired by their success and the  introduction of new display technologies,  

the team sets out to make an actual DynaBook.  Mizoguchi envisioned having a true portable  

that can go to where humans are,  rather than the other way around.

This meant pushing the boundaries once  more. Mizoguchi envisioned his Dynabook  

to be as large as an A4 file, be just 40  millimeters thick, weigh under 3 kilograms ...

And have a backlit LCD, an instant start  button like the IBM PC Convertible,  

and a hard disk drive. And ah yes, a price tag  of under 200,000 yen - a radical price cut.

The development process was grueling.  A now-famous anecdote recounted the  

engineers producing a prototype that was  only 50 millimeters thick. So about 10  

millimeters short of goal. They nevertheless  argued that they had hit their limits.

So the development manager supposedly  took that prototype and immersed it in  

a bucket of water. Upon seeing  bubbles rising to the surface,  

he said that there was still space left to  cut. So they got it down to 44 millimeters.

In June 26th 1989, Mizoguchi and  Toshiba announced the Dynabook  

J-3100 at the Shinjuku Century Hyatt. And again,  

people marveled at how the laptop pushed the  envelope in terms of size, weight, and features.

After the 1989 presentation, Mizoguchi got in  touch with his idol. And Kay came to Japan to give  

a brief talk and even signed eight of the Dynabook  laptops. For Mizoguchi, it was a dream come true.

Though, I would be bereft if I did not also  mention that Kay later said that he did  

not consider the Toshiba Dynabook a real  Dynabook ... because it ran MS-DOS. Hah!

## Conclusion

Toshiba remained a leader in the  industry throughout the 1990s by  

pushing the envelope on battery life,  size and weight, and build quality.

In 1997, they sold their 10 millionth unit. But  in the 2000s, they lost ground to HP and Dell  

in the lower-end consumer range - not meeting  the price point fast and aggressively enough.

And in the corporate space,  they ceded ground to Dell and  

IBM/Lenovo - which did a better  job of entering the enterprise.

In 2018, Toshiba began selling its  stake in its Dynabook division to  

Sharp/Foxconn - completing their exit  from the industry in August 2020.

Nevertheless, the commercial success of the T1100,  

T1000 and its successors set the tone  for the laptop as we know it today.

It proved to all that this form factor was  worth pursuing. And they pushed the limits on  

its thinness, function and portability. They can  be proud of their impact in electronics history.