The Inventor
Adam Osbourne
He is known as the inventor of the Laptop. Adam Osborne was one of the most important and influential people in the early history of the manufacture of personal computers (PCs) and made the first Portable Computer now known as Laptop. She was born in Thailand in 1939, and spent her childhood in Tamil Nadu, South India, with her British parents. He moved to England when he was 11 years old.
In 1961 he graduated from the University of Birmingham, England, as a baccalaureate in chemical engineering. After that, he moved to the United States and completed his education at the University of Delaware and earned a doctorate in chemical engineering. Later, he worked at an oil mining company Shell Oil.
THE LIFE OF ADAM OSBORNE
Like most people who always think creatively, Osborne felt uncomfortable in living his life as an employee in a large company. He did not linger at Shell and resigned from the company. He then realized that he really enjoyed his new job as a guidebook writer, especially about the new computer guide book he would develop. In the early 1970s, he landed a new job as a guidebook author for Intel's microprocessors.
Osborne continued his freelance work as a writer and in 1972 tried to establish Osborne and Associates, a company engaged in writing computer manuals that were simple, easy, and readable for computer enthusiasts. He also wrote a book called “The Value of Power”, which later changed its title to “An Introduction to Microcomputers”. He tried to offer his book to a publisher who was in his city. Unfortunately, the book was rejected. He never despair. So he decided to try publishing the book himself.
At an event at a computer club, he showed his book to Bruce Van Natta from AMSAI, one of the famous computer companies in the US. After reading the book, Van Natta became interested and decided to include one book on each IMSAI computer he would sell.
With this good and win-win start, as well as the belief that people will flock to guide books on computers that can be easily read and understood, he said, Osborn started his own publishing company called Osborn Books.
Five years later, the publisher Osborne Books has published more than 40 titles of books on computers. In 1979, Osborne sold his publishing company to McGraw-Hill. At the same time, he began writing in a column for the computer magazines Interface Age and Infowold. He is very confident that the computer will be able to be really useful if the computer is made mobile (can be taken everywhere) and dynamic with the people who use it, he said, and it can be used anytime and anywhere the person is.
He began to think that someday the computer company that existed at that time would certainly understand about the concepts (ideas) in his head. However, existing computer companies are not ready with the concepts. After selling his publishing company, Osborn began to divert his energy to design a computer that was portable, attractive, easy to use, and powerful.
THE FIRST PORTABLE COMPUTER
Felsenstein became interested in following the idea proposed by Osborne, he began designing a portable computer, which would be able to be stored under a seat in an airplane. The computer weighs just 24 pounds, has a 52-column display (display) that will be enough inside a 5-inch screen, a protective tube, and 2 disk drives.
In order to meet the needs of a small display, Felsenstein tries to store full-screen information in memory, and make it easier for users if they press the buttons for the display screen to roll.
As soon as the hardware materialized, Osborne tried to contact several software providers and made agreements to provide BASIC and CBASIC languages, Wordstar word processors, and SuperCalc data processing programs on each of his computers. The market price of the software is around $2,000, which causes Osborne to have to raise the original price of each unit sold. Osborne introduced his new computer, Osborne 1, at “West Coast Computer Faire” in April 1981.
The computer is the first portable computer whose software can be obtained at a price of $1,795 and is a surprise breakthrough and promises to achieve successful sales. In September 1981, the Osborne Computer Cooporation (OCC) received its first sales value of millions of US dollars. In fact, Osborne 1 became one of the best-selling and widely sold PCs that quickly reached peak sales of approximately 10,000 units per month.
In the second year, Osborne's company reached a sales target of 70 million dollars. This overwhelmed its competitors, such as IBM and Apple. This was further compounded when Osborne announced his new computer, the Executive, long before the item was ready to be marketed.
This makes consumers stop buying Osborne 1 while waiting for a new computer to be issued. However, unfortunately in September 1983, without knowing for sure, OCC went bankrupt. Because Executive sales are not in line with Osborne 1 sales.
In the spring of 1984, Osborne returned to the publishing business. The company is called Paperback Software International Ltd. Initially, he tried to publish cheap software to rival expensive software that was on the market at that time. The first time, the idea was successful and he was able to take over and attract computer consumers, especially companies in the UK.
Osborne's most successful product is a data processing program called VP Planner. Unfortunately, Lotus Development Corporation felt that the program violated the patent rights of their program, Lotus 1-2-3. In 1987, Lotus sued the software, and charged the software license fee. After going through a long process in court, the court finally decided that the doubling of the menu interface belonging to Lotus 1-2-3 of the software had violated the patent.
After all, Adam Osborne was a genius inventor on how to make a portable computer that provides convenience for computer users. Undeniably, bright ideas will be very useful for the community of computer users today. Adam Osborne died in Kodiakanal, southern India, on March 25, 2003 after suffering from a prolonged illness of his brain.
