Origins of term "laptop" computer, and absurdity of "first"

On Thu, 13 Sep 2012, Evan Koblentz wrote: NONE! I was there. It was hotter than hell at NCC (>100F in the tents out back; a few people DIED from the heat!). Instead of going to Disneyland on Apple's dime, I was supposed to meet my ride at the Gavilan booth. They didn't show. I stood around in the Gavilan booth for hours. I didn't consider their "laptop" designation to be a very good one. Eventually, I took a bus. At the same show, one day, I bought lunch for John Draper, and he explained to me the directory structure of the UCSD P system. Without having to exercise with him! On the first day of the show, booth jerks at both Superbrain/Intertec and Televideo threatened to sue me if Xenocopy handled their disk formats, because they couldn't imagine ANY possible use for disk format conversion other than pirating THEIR software! That night, I added both formats. They never kept their promise [of free ink]. All in all, a very memorable show! VERY smalltime, and throughly gone long before WWW. Joe Garner needed something very portable for data acquisition in elevator control rooms. ELevator COMPuter COmpany. He found a good machinist, and designed brackets, mounts, etc. for putting various motherboards (including TRS80! and later 5150/5160) and a crude CP/M board of his own into Halliburton attache cases, with a 5" CRT and optional battery. He was selling a few, and I convinced him to do a production run and try public sales, starting at my West Coast Computer Faire booth. He sold a few during setup! Meanwhile, massive amounts of chrome and black plexiglass was going up across the ailse. Adam came across the aisle, admired it, shook my hand, and then went and told his press conference that his computer was "the very first and only portable computer". The comparison of my booth (elegantly made of flush doors and filing cabinets) with Osborne's was enough to convince Joe to go back to only doing custom installations, and at the end of the show, he stopped public retail sales. The whole thing is completely unworthy of ANY historical note, other than as my further refutation of others' claims of being "first". There is ALWAYS some nobody so small that they got crushed, who preceded any of the giant "firsts". "Ain't no room for the little guys anymore." Joe very briefly made his own disk format for a CP/M model of his setup; I have, and support in XenoCopy, the only surviving disk in existence of that format, because Joe then decided to go MS-DOS, which he used in his machines for many more years. But NOT the first made, shown, sold, nor delivered. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com