Good point!

Of course Alan Kay's Dynabook was the original gangsta "ahead of its time" laptop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

And the GRiD Compass laptop was even ahead of the Data General/One's time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General/One

>The Data General/One (DG-1) was a laptop introduced in 1984 by Data General.

The GRiD had a fanatical niche following in the government and military and space and spook industries.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28736510

>Old school hackers, military generals, special forces paratroopers, and space shuttle astronauts who are sensitive to social status use a GRiD Compass.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRiD_Compass

>Development began in 1979, and the main buyer was the U.S. government. NASA used it on the Space Shuttle during the early 1980s, as it was powerful, lightweight, and compact. The military Special Forces also purchased the machine, as it could be used by paratroopers in combat.

>Along with the Gavilan SC and Sharp PC-5000 released the following year, the GRiD Compass established much of the basic design of subsequent laptop computers, although the laptop concept itself owed much to the Dynabook project developed at Xerox PARC from the late 1960s. The Compass company subsequently earned significant returns on its patent rights as its innovations became commonplace.

I asked Glenn Edens, who co-founded GRiD, about a story I heard about the GRiD a long time ago, and here's the discussion:

https://computerhistory.org/profile/glenn-edens/

Hey Glenn!

Did you ever hear the rumor about the Mossad agent whose GRiD stopped a bullet?

I was writing about the GRiD on Hacker News, but can't find any citations for that rumor. But it sounds like it could be true!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28736200

>Not a solution for people who are sensitive to social status.

>Old school hackers, military generals, special forces paratroopers, and space shuttle astronauts who are sensitive to social status use a GRiD Compass. [...] I can't find a citation and don't know if it's true, but decades ago I heard a rumor that a Mossad agent's magnesium alloy GRiD stopped a bullet! Try that with a MacBook Air.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3527036

>Man in a Briefcase: The Social Construction of the Laptop Computer and the Emergence of a Type Form

>Abstract

>Dominant design discourse of the late 1970s and early 1980s presented the introduction of the laptop computer as the result of 'inevitable' progress in a variety of disparate technologies, pulled together to create an unprecedented, revolutionary technological product. While the laptop was a revolutionary product, such a narrative works to dismiss a series of products which predated the laptop but which had much the same aim, and to deny a social drive for such products, which had been in evidence for a number of years before the technology to achieve them was available. This article shows that the social drive for the development of portable computing came in part from the 'macho mystique' of concealed technology that was a substantial motif in popular culture at that time. Using corporate promotional material from the National Archive for the History of Computing at the University of Manchester, and interviews with some of the designers and engineers involved in the creation of early portable computers, this work explores the development of the first real laptop computer, the 'GRiD Compass', in the context of its contemporaries. The consequent trajectory of laptop computer design is then traced to show how it has become a product which has a mixture of associated meanings to a wide range of consumers. In this way, the work explores the role of consumption in the development of digital technology.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasas-original-laptop-the-grid-com...

>NASA’s Original Laptop: The GRiD Compass Rugged and well designed, the first clamshell laptop flew on the space shuttle

https://web.archive.org/web/20080625004757/http://www.netmag...

>GRiDs In Space

https://groups.google.com/g/ba.market.computers/c/w5KVg1Igdt...

>GRiD Compass laptops, peripherals, and software

https://medium.com/l-a-t-o/invece-di-guardare-avanti-prova-a...

>[translated:] The Grid Compass was made of black lacquered magnesium alloy.

>Among its most remembered features, there is the fact that the paint went away after a while, due to the weight and dimensions that did not allow it to be too delicate with its transport. And so the dull black splintered, revealing the shiny metal beneath.

>Grid Compass - Bill Moggridge Design

>The Grid Compass was a status symbol, the flag of that tribe of people who wanted to show the world that they can never really disconnect from work.

>Owning it was cool.

>But even cooler was having chipped it, because it was the unmistakable sign that one not only possessed that thing, but actually used it.

The GRiD was so well built, and they were so popular with the military, that rumor was totally believable.

This has some stories about spooky GRiD users, like Admiral John Poindexter, who was a bit of a hacker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQgoAQq7bP4

>Pioneering the Laptop: Engineering the GRiD compass

>Introduced in 1982, the GRiD Compass 1100 was likely the first commercial computer created in a laptop format and one of the first truly portable machines. With its rugged magnesium clamshell case (the screen folds flat over the keyboard), switching power supply, electro-luminescent display, non-volatile bubble memory, and built-in modem, the hardware design incorporated many features that we take for granted today. Software innovations included a graphical operating system, an integrated productivity suite including word processor, spreadsheet, graphics and e-mail. GRiD Systems Corporation, founded in 1979 by John Ellenby and his co-founders Glenn Edens and David Paulsen, pioneered many portable devices including the laptop, pen-based and tablet PC form factors.

>Key members of the original GRiD engineering team -- Glenn Edens, Carol Hankins, Craig Mathias and Dave Paulsen -- share engineering stories from the Wild West of the laptop computer. Moderated by New York Times journalist John Markoff.

(At 32:37 they mention an external 5 1/4" floppy disk peripheral that was returned for service with a bullet hole, and the "Scrubbing Bubbles" software they wrote for the government to erase the bubble memory in case of emergency.)

Glenn Edens sent the following messages at 11:16 PM

Hello Don, I know that rumor, I can neither confirm nor deny :)

We got a lot of returned gear with bullet holes or shrapnel damage of odd kinds.

I doubt GRiD's use had anything to do with social status though - it was more about it was the first laptop, it was rugged (we over-engineered the heck out of it), it had an amazing software development environment (you could actually write SW for it on it beyond BASIC), usually folks rag on the price, however if you fully configured any other computer of the day the price was not all that different - plus no one paid retail in those days, thats what everyone forgets :)

I love all the references you found!

I'll also add that it is a myth that the military and Government were our biggest customers, they were about 25%, our biggest early customers were banks, audit firms, engineering firms, oil exploration, etc.

The first machine went to Steve Jobs (he paid for it, it was a bet he and I made), the second machine went to William F. Buckley (he paid for it as well). The one thing I regret is that we didn't release the Smalltalk system we did for it (getting a mouse was not easy in 1982, the only producer at that time was Tat Lam and all his production went to Xerox (Star prototypes as I remember). A funny story that for Apple to get a mouse prototype for the Lisa I had to go "appropriate" one from Xerox PARC - with tacit permission, everyone forgets Xerox was an investor in Apple (Trip Hawkins kindly tells that story from time to time).

So how are you doing?

Larry Ellison was an early buyer as well to use for a sailing race computer - I was told it replaced a DEC minicomputer that was being used onboard, saving a lot of weight and power draw :)

I can add it wasn't Mossad that I know of, it was closer to home, although I think we may have discussed that long ago - it was a US Agency :).

Don wrote:

So I’m reading between the lines that it DID stop a bullet, but it was somebody in the US, not the Mossad. Is that why Reagan survived his assassination attempt??! ;)

I still believe the social status was more like the unintended effect, not the primary cause, of people owning a GRiD, because they certainly were bad-assed computers.

Maybe MythBusters cold do an experiment to find out if a GRiD will stop a bullet. Hopefully not a working one though, those should be treated with care and respect and not shot at.

Wow it would have been amazing to run Smalltalk on that thing. As it was so inspired by the Dynabook, did Alan Kay ever get to play with one?

Glenn replied:

That’s the story. I never heard it had anything to do with Reagan though. Over the years we did get multiple units with all sorts of crazy damage, much of it was repairable, some was not.

Well we certainly did nothing to counter the image, although I think that really came later. In that time (we started shipping in 1982) even having a computer was a big deal no matter if it were an Osbourne or a GRiD. Although the Compaq’s et. al. sewing machine sized computers shipped well into the late 80’s. We really didn’t any serious competition until 88’ or 89’, so nearly five years after we started shipping. For the first 3 years we were always catching up to the backlog.

Indeed :). We definitely found ‘debris' inside the machines that were returned to see if they could be repaired, obviously it would have to do with what size bullet and angle of incidence.

The Dynabook was the inspiration for sure. Yes, Alan Kay played with several GRiD models as did Dan Ingalls. The Smalltalk implementation was on the GRiD was pretty good for the day, the 8086 being a real 16-bit machine made a difference. The Alto II was still a bit faster, but not by much. If a mouse were readily commercially available we would have shipped it. It was a little hard to use on the small screen so you wound up moving windows often.