Inventor of Laptop Passes Away At 69
Bangalore: Every time we open a laptop, we smile at some or the other feature that makes it easier to use. The design of the laptop came as a blessing to the world paving a way to mobile computing. And the man behind this great invention, Bill Moggridge, died on Saturday, Sept. 8 of cancer. He was 69.
Moggridge is credited with the design of the Grid Compass, a computer that had a keyboard and yellow-on-black display that sold for $8,150 when it was released in 1982. It was encased in magnesium, was roughly 15 by 12 inches, which opened to reveal a glowing screen on top that folded over the keyboard on bottom. It made use of an Intel 8086 processor, a 320×240 pixel display, 340kb of memory, and a very fast 1,200 baud modem. The Compass was popular with the military and made trips aboard the space shuttle starting in 1983.
