Today's laptop computer is a pretty amazing device. Truly portable, light weight. long lasting battery life and chock full of features. With more computing power than the on-board computers that sent man to the moon. It wasn't always this elegant. I'm here to tell you that from personal experience. My story is from the late 1980's and I was working for a start up making IBM compatible products. I was traveling through Europe several times per year as we grew our customer base. When I traveled, I carried a laptop predecessor called a luggable computer. Note in the picture it has a CRT display. Basically, it was a desktop pc with a handle and weighed in at close to 30 lbs. The screen was black and white (really green) and this was before Windows so we're talking a "C prompt".
As I met with various distributors, I would hook this pc up to the local mainframe through a special built emulator board. It allowed me to capture the communications protocol that was country or language specific. Then our engineering staff back home could make sure our devices operated correctly when we shipped to different countries. I would record this on a floppy disk and return home with a pot of engineering gold for the geeks.
In those days, a device like this invited loads of scrutiny in airports. The gate attendants didn't know what to make of it and many times would not allow me to board with it. Another issue was getting it in or out of some countries. I finally had to travel with a set of papers showing I owned it and was not reselling the device as many countries assumed I was trying to avoid paying a VAT.
Another quirky issue was that since this was really a desktop pc, whenever I arrived at my destination, I had to take the cover off and reseat all the internal printed circuit boards and any thing else that came loose. It really didn't travel well.
So, I am traveling from Germany to Switzerland one week, had to check the Compaq as luggage and we land. I am waiting to exit the plane and I hear my name announced over the PA. Will you please wait in your seat for the Captain. This can't be good I'm thinking. The rest of the passengers disembark, and the Captain comes down the aisle, "Come with me please", so I follow him to the rear of the airplane, and down a set of stairs to the runway! Now I am on the runway looking up into the cargo hold at a Swiss guy motioning me to climb up into the hold. Remember, these are the days of wearing suits all the time. But, up I go into the hold.
Apparently, the detachable keyboard came loose in flight and the 12 inch coiled cord now appears to be four feet long! The keyboard is now somewhere else in the aircraft below the cargo hold.. The Swiss guy has a pair of cutters and is asking if he can cut the cord. "Nein danke" I say (about the only two German words I know) and we go about trying to fish the keyboard out of the hold below. Forty five minutes later I retrieve the PC but the cord is now permanently four feet long. Thank god for bungee cords.
The demise to this pc came a couple years later. I find myself in a German train station after a very long and tiring trip. I have all my luggage loaded on a cart and I'm going down a three story high escalator. The cart is in front of me, the Compaq just out of reach when it slides off the cart. It starts down the escalator in what seems like slow motion. As it picks up speed, parts start flying and half way down, it's making a hell of a racket, hitting every third step or so. Thank god there was nobody in front of me!
By the time it gets to the bottom, it's in a hundred pieces, plastic, metal and printed circuit boards everywhere. How do I react? I act like it never happened, just keep walking and ignore the accident. No rubber necking for me, just board the train and be on my way. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing, I finally got rid of that thing.
When I got back home to work , I was asked about the Compaq, where was it?
"Seized in customs",I said, " I'm lucky I'm not in jail, I was barely able to get out of the country"
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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