page_title: Epson HX-20
section_title: Features
hierarchical_section_title: Epson HX-20 / Features
caption_attribution_description: English: Epson HX-20 portable computer in plastic case with paper rolls.
context_page_description: The Epson HX-20 was the first "true" laptop computer. It was invented in July 1980 by Yukio Yokozawa, who worked for Suwa Seikosha, a branch of Japanese company Seiko, receiving a patent for the invention. It was announced in 1981 as the HC-20 in Japan, and was introduced by Epson in North America as the HX-20 at the 1981 COMDEX computer show in Las Vegas, where it drew significant attention for its portability. It had a mass-market release in July 1982, as the HC-20 in Japan and as the Epson HX-20 in North America. The size of an A4 notebook and weighing 1.6 kg, it was hailed by BusinessWeek magazine as the "fourth revolution in personal computing".
context_section_description: Epson advertised the HX-20 with a photograph and photo editing of the computer on two facing magazine pages with the headline "Actual size". With about the footprint of an A4 size page, the Epson HX-20 features a full-transit keyboard, rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, a built-in 120 × 32-pixel LCD which allowed 4 lines of 20 characters, a calculator-size dot-matrix printer, the EPSON BASIC programming language, two Hitachi 6301 CPUs at 614 kHz which is essentially an enhanced Motorola 6801, 16 kB RAM expandable to 32 kB, two RS-232 ports at a maximum of 4800 bits/s for the first 8-pin DIN connector intended for modem or serial printer with the second port capable of 38,400 bits/s using a 5-pin DIN connector which was mainly for use with external floppy drive and video display an early concept of docking station, a 300 bit/s acoustic coupler was available, built-in microcassette drive, barcode reader connector. Uses a proprietary operating system, which consists of the EPSON BASIC interpreter and a monitor program, and weighs approximately 1.6 kg. Known colours of the machine are silver and cream, while some prototypes were dark grey. The HX-20 was supplied with a grey or brown carry case. An external acoustic coupler, the CX-20, was available for the HX-20, as was an external floppy disk drive, the TF-20, and an external speech synthesis Augmentative Communication Device (ACD), 'RealVoice'. Another extension was the serially connected 40 × 24 character video. It used a special protocol, EPSP, which was also used by the external floppy disk drive.
  The battery life of the HX-20 was approximately 50 hours running BASIC and less using the microcassette, printer or RS-232. Data integrity could be preserved in the 4.0 - 6.0 V range. The power supply was rated for 8 W. Operating and charging it would tolerate 5 - 35 °C. Data integrity could be preserved at -5 - 40 °C. The HX-20 could be stored between -20 - 60 °C.
  The later, more popular TRS-80 Model 100 line, designed by Kyocera, owed much to the design of the HX-20.
caption: The Epson HX-20 in its transport case with two spare paper rolls.
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