World's First Laptop

World's First Laptop : World's First Computer Notebook : World's First Handheld Computer

The Epson HX-20 (also known as the HC-20) is generally regarded as the first laptop computer, announced in November 1981, although first sold widely in 1983.

A simple handheld computer, it featured a full-transit 68-key keyboard, rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, a small (120×32-pixel) dot-matrix LCD with 4 lines of text, 20 characters per line text mode, a 24 column dot matrix printer, a Microsoft BASIC interpreter, and 16 KB of RAM (expandable to 32 KB). Through at least the late 1980s Epson continued to release laptops such as the L3s.

Epson HX-20

Manufacturer : Epson
Release date                : 1982
Introductory price : 795 US$ (today $1911.67)
CPU : 2 Hitachi 6301 CPUs at 614 kHz
Memory : 16 kB RAM expandable to 32 kB
                                    32 kB ROM expandable to 64 kB
Display : 4 lines x 20 characters LCD
Graphics : 120 × 32-pixel
Input : full-transit keyboard
Power : rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries
Dimensions : A4 Sized
Weight : approximately 1.6 kg

A History of laptops describes the efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to build small, portable personal computers that combine the components, inputs, outputs and capabilities of a desktop computer in a small chassis.