grid lust

Last week, we were invited by our friends at Skype to watch a special screening of Objectified in Soho.

It was quite enjoyable. None of it made me think anything new, but I'm into design enough to enjoy watching designers talk about the stuff they make. So I was happy.

What got me particularly excited (this will annoy some of the future-gazing designers in the movie) was this Grid Compass laptop from 1982; the first commercial laptop computer:


I'll give you a moment to smile at its tiny screen.

One of the nicest details of this beauty is a 'scoop' in the hinge of the lid. Its presence meant that a stray pencil that found its way into the crack would be popped out again as you close the lid down. The simplicity and thought behind that is very lovely indeed.

If you're interested, there's a video about the Grid here. I won't embed it because it's a bit dry and basically features people talking - slowly.

Incidentally, all this got me looking for other vintage laptop stuff like this. Nice:


Anyway, I got wondering - when we're bathing in invisible, hyper-haptic post-hardware devices - do you think we'll long for a big scoop that ejects pencils like pop-tarts?