Adam Osborne | |
|---|---|
 Osborne in 1983 | |
| Born | 6 March 1939 Bangkok, Thailand |
| Died | 18 March 2003 (aged 64) Kodaikanal, India |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Osborne 1 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer engineering |
| Institutions | Osborne Computer Corporation |
Adam Osborne (6 March 1939 – 18 March 2003) was a British author, software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere. He introduced the Osborne 1, the first commercially successful portable computer.
Osborne was born to British parents in Bangkok, Thailand on 6 March 1939. [1] His father, Arthur Osborne, was a teacher of eastern religion and philosophy [1] and a lecturer in English at Chulalongkorn University. All members of the family were fluent in the Tamil language. He spent World War II in Tiruvannamalai, in southern India, with his mother. There they were frequent visitors to Sri Ramana Maharshi's Ashram [1] He attended Presentation Convent School in Kodaikanal until Class 6.[ citation needed ] In 1950, the Osborne family moved back to England. [2] From the age of 11, he was educated at a Catholic boarding school in Warwickshire but from 1954 to 1957 was a pupil at the grammar school Leamington College for Boys, where he played chess. [1] He graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Birmingham in 1961, [1] and received his PhD from the University of Delaware in 1968. [1] It was while living in the United States that he learned to write computer code. [1] He obtained a position as a chemical engineer with Shell Oil, in California, but was dismissed. [1] [3]
Osborne was a pioneer in the computer book field, founding a company in 1972 that specialized in easy-to-read computer manuals. By 1977, Osborne & Associates had 40 titles in its catalogue. In 1979, it was bought by McGraw-Hill and continued as an imprint of McGraw-Hill, "Osborne/McGraw-Hill". [4] [2] [5] He also wrote several books. [2] [6] One of them, An Introduction To Microcomputers, sold 300,000 copies. [1]
Osborne was known to frequent the Homebrew Computer Club's meetings around 1975. He created the first commercially available portable computer, the Osborne 1, released in April 1981. It weighed 24.5 pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795—just over half the cost of a computer from other manufacturers with comparable features—and ran the popular CP/M 2.2 operating system. [7] It was designed to fit under an airline seat. [8] At its peak, Osborne Computer Corporation shipped 10,000 units of "Osborne 1" per month. [9] Osborne was one of the first personal computing pioneers to understand fully that there was a wide market of buyers who were not computing hobbyists: the Osborne 1 included word processing and spreadsheet software. [7] This was at a time when IBM would not bundle hardware and software with their PCs, selling separately the operating systems, monitors, and even cables for the monitor.
Adam Osborne's experience in the computer industry gave his new company credibility. [10] Osborne Computer Corporation advertisements compared Adam Osborne's influence on the personal computer market to Henry Ford's influence on transportation. [7] It is said that in 1983, Osborne bragged about two advanced new computers his company was developing. These statements destroyed consumer demand for the Osborne 1, and the resulting inventory glut forced Osborne Computer to file for bankruptcy on 13 September 1983. This phenomenon, a pre-announcement of a new product causing a catastrophic collapse in demand for older ones, became known as the Osborne effect, but according to some new sources, the real reasons for Osborne Computer's bankruptcy were management errors [11] and insufficient cash flow. [12]
After Osborne Computer's collapse, Adam Osborne wrote a best-selling memoir of his experience, Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation, with John C. Dvorak, which was published in 1984. [13]
In 1984, Osborne founded Paperback Software International Ltd., a company that specialized in inexpensive computer software. Its advertisements featured Osborne himself, arguing that if telephone companies applied the same logic to their pricing as software companies, a telephone would cost $600. One of its products was VP-Planner, an inexpensive clone of Lotus 1-2-3, which led to legal action. In 1987, Lotus sued Paperback Software. As a result of the lawsuit, consumer confidence waned for Paperback Software, and its revenues dropped 80% by 1989, preventing the firm from getting venture capital for expansion. In February 1990, the case went to court and on 28 June, the court ruled that Paperback Software's product, by copying Lotus 1-2-3's look and feel menu interface, violated Lotus's copyright. [14] Osborne stepped down from Paperback Software the same year. [2] Paperback's database application, VP-Info continued to sell well for many more years, and acquired a second life as Sharkbase. [15]
His final venture, in 1992, was to found the company Noetics Software, to work on artificial intelligence. [1]
Osborne was a member of Mensa. [1] He married – and divorced – twice, firstly in the mid-1960s, to Cynthia Geddes, an American, [1] and later to Barbara Burdick (Zelnick). Osborne had three children. [4] Both former wives and all his children survived him. [1]
In 1992, Osborne returned to India in declining health, suffering from a brain disorder that triggered frequent minor strokes. He died in his sleep on 18 March 2003, in Kodaikanal, India, aged 64. [1] [16] [4]
Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software. It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles in the business market.
An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central processing unit, sourced either from Intel or a second source like AMD, Cyrix or other vendors such as Texas Instruments, Fujitsu, OKI, Mitsubishi or NEC and is capable of using interchangeable commodity hardware such as expansion cards. Initially such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones, but the term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, as the vast majority of microcomputers produced since the 1990s are IBM compatible. IBM itself no longer sells personal computers, having sold its division to Lenovo in 2005. "Wintel" is a similar description that is more commonly used for modern computers.
Jack Tramiel was a Polish-American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 are some home computers produced while he was running the company. Tramiel later formed Atari Corporation after he purchased the remnants of the original Atari, Inc. from its parent company. He was one of six people spotlighted when the computer was denoted "Machine of the Year" by Time magazine in 1982.
Lotus Software was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018.
Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based in Solana Beach in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems (NLS) to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro produced a line of rugged, "luggable" CP/M-based computers sold with an extensive software bundle which supplanted its competitors and quickly became one of the top-selling personal computer lines of the early 1980s.
The Osborne Computer Corporation (OCC) was an American computer company and pioneering maker of portable computers. It was located in the Silicon Valley of the southern San Francisco Bay Area in California. Adam Osborne, the founder of the company, developed, with design work from Lee Felsenstein, the world's first mass-produced portable computer, the Osborne 1, in 1981.
The Osborne 1 is the first commercially successful portable computer, released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighs 24.5 lb (11.1 kg), cost US$1,795, and runs the CP/M 2.2 operating system. It is powered from a wall socket, as it has no on-board battery, but it is still classed as a portable device since it can be hand-carried when the keyboard is closed.
A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another, as opposed to those designed to remain stationary at a single location such as desktops and workstations. These computers usually include a display and keyboard that are directly connected to the main case, all sharing a single power plug together, much like later desktop computers called all-in-ones (AIO) that integrate the system's internal components into the same case as the display. In modern usage, a portable computer usually refers to a very light and compact personal computer such as a laptop, subnotebook or handheld PC, while touchscreen-based handheld ("palmtop") devices such as tablets, phablets and smartphones are called mobile devices instead.
John C. Dvorak is an American writer and broadcaster in the areas of technology and personal computing. He has been a columnist for multiple magazines since the 1980s and has written or co-authored over a dozen how-to books on software and technology. He was vice president of Mevio, and has been a host on TechTV and TWiT.tv. He is currently a co-host of the No Agenda podcast.
GO Corporation was a company founded in 1987 to create pen-based portable computers, and a pen-based operating system and software. It was a pioneer of pen-based computing and was one of the most well-funded start-up companies of its time.
Columbia Data Products, Inc. (CDP) is a company which produced the first legally reverse-engineered IBM PC clones, starting with the MPC 1600 series in 1982. It faltered in that market after only a few years, and later reinvented itself as a software development company.
The Osborne Vixen is a "luggable" portable computer announced by the Osborne Computer Corporation in November 1984, as a follow-up to their Osborne 1 and Osborne Executive system.
The Osborne effect is a social phenomenon of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current, soon-to-be-obsolete product as an unexpected drawback of a company's announcing a future product prematurely. It is an example of cannibalization. The term alludes to the Osborne Computer Corporation, whose second product did not become available until more than a year after it was announced. The company's subsequent bankruptcy was widely blamed on reduced sales after the announcement.
VP-Info is a database language and compiler for the personal computer. VP-Info was a competitor to the Clipper and dBase applications in the late 1980s and 1990s. VP-Info was originally intended to run on MS-DOS, DR-DOS and the PC-MOS/386 operating system, but now is run on the vDOS, or DOSbox-X, emulators. The last release of VP-Info, a multi-tasking, multi-user version released in 1992 with a built-in compiler, and was named SharkBase, or simply "Shark".
The Gavilan SC is an early laptop computer first released by the Gavilan Computer Corporation in April 1984. The computer ran on an Intel 8088 microprocessor running at 5 MHz and sported a touchpad for a pointing device, one of the first computers to do so. The laptop was developed by Manuel "Manny" Fernandez, founder of the Gavilan Computer Corporation, and unveiled in May 1983.
Paperback Software International Ltd. was a software company founded in 1983 by Adam Osborne to manufacture discount software such as word processor Paperback Writer and related spell checker Paperback Speller, spreadsheet VP-Planner, database VP-Info, and the VP-Expert artificial intelligence software. VP-Expert was developed by Brian Sawyer The company was headquartered in Berkeley, California.
The Sharp PC-5000 was a pioneering laptop computer, announced by Sharp Corporation of Japan in November 1983. It employed a clamshell design in which the display closes over the keyboard, like the earlier GRiD Compass and contemporary Gavilan SC.
Integrated software is a software for personal computers that combines the most commonly used functions of many productivity software programs into one application.
Sorcim Corporation was an early start-up company in Silicon Valley, founded in June 1980 by Richard Frank, Paul McQuesten, Martin Herbach, Anil Lakhwara, and Steve Jasik - all former Control Data Corporation employees working in the Language Group in Sunnyvale, CA. Jasik left company early on, to develop the MacNosy product for the Macintosh.
The Osborne PC is an unreleased IBM PC–compatible personal computer developed between 1983 and 1984 by Osborne Computer Corporation. Only prototypes of the computer were ever produced.
