IBM 5100

The IBM 5100 Portable Computer is one of the first portable computers, announced by IBM's General Systems Division on September 9, 1975, six years before the IBM Personal Computer, and eight years before the first successful IBM compatible portable computer, the Compaq Portable. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) that was developed at the IBM Los Gatos Laboratory and Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. Although it was marketed as a portable computer, it still needed to be plugged into an electric socket. When IBM announced the 5100 they took the then unusual step of having 15 sales teams each take a 5100 to a national news center to demonstrate it, rather than presenting it at a headquarters press event. They emphasised that it was IBM's smallest computer system, comparable to the IBM 1130 while also being smaller than the System/32, released 10 months earlier. When the IBM PC was introduced in 1981, it was originally designated as the IBM 5150, putting it in the "5100" series, though its architecture was unrelated to the IBM 5100's. The 5100 was IBM's second transportable computer. Previously, a truck-based IBM 1401 was configured in 1960 for military use and referred to as a mobile computer. The IBM 5100 was withdrawn on 31 March 1982, by which time IBM had announced its larger cousins, the IBM 5110 (January 1978) and the IBM 5120 (February 1980). At a Monte Carlo racing event that ran 10 days after the 5110 announcement, five of them were used by race commissioners to retrieve vehicle specifications during the vehicle inspection process. During the race itself five IBM 5100s were used to calculate team and individual results and lap times for the press.