In his otherwise wonderful “Tablet Computing From 1888 to 2010”, our own Brian X Chen missed one essential innovation. It was the original IBM thinkPad, an in-house model which was used by staff while the slab-like notebook was gestating in Big Blue’s techno-womb. Made for many years before the laptop appeared at the crossover of the 80s and the 90s, it even (almost) conformed to the majority of Chen’s tablet rules:
The ThinkPad was, of course, the handsome notebook you see above, a leather-bound pad which spoke of the austere authority of International Business Machines, and with a wry, knowing playfulness seen also in Paul Rand’s Eye-Bee-M poster (Rand designed the IBM logo, and was also one of the few people ever to push Steve Jobs around when he refused to offer more than one option for the NEXT logo). According to legend, this Think pad inspired the name of the computer version. I want one. It makes the Moleskine look like a wad of cheap paper napkins.
The Original IBM ThinkPad [A Continuous Lean via ★]
