Each laptop computer is just not the identical and each laptop computer is just not the IBM ThinkPad 701C. Arguably essentially the most fascinating ultraportable pc ever made, the IBM ThinkPad 701C’s distinctive full-size butterfly keyboard — designed by John Karidis and impressed by his daughter’s toy — within the compact laptop computer was one thing exceptional on the time.
“The largest purpose the butterfly keyboard got here out was [these] enterprise laptops have been clearly very talked-about with enterprise people and the most important criticism that we bought from clients was the competing laptops have been too small,” Dilip Bhatia, Chief Buyer Expertise Officer and Vice-President of Person & Buyer Expertise at Lenovo, remembers the IBM ThinkPad 701C and the way it modified the marketplace for ultraportable enterprise laptops.
The ThinkPad 700 collection idea was launched by Worldwide Enterprise Machines Company (Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC enterprise and the enduring ThinkPad model in 2005) to create a brand new class of enterprise laptops that’s simpler to hold and use. The problem for the group was to suit a full-sized keyboard alongside a ten.4-inch LCD color show into the subsequent ThinkPad 701C transportable laptop computer.
To unravel the distinctive design downside, Dr. John Karidis, an IBM distinguished engineer, took on the problem to develop the “Butterfly” keyboard. Bhatia explains that Karidis, a mechanical engineer with IBM’s Private Computing Division at the moment, bought the thought of a foldout butterfly keyboard by observing his three-year-old daughter who was constructing shapes out of her toy blocks. Observing his daughter play with wood blocks, Karidis considered slicing the board throughout the quantity 4, T, H and M keys. That manner the board was damaged into two distinctive movable components. That was how the “Butterfly” keyboard happened.
“At the moment, the one display screen obtainable was a ten.4-inch display screen. The issue assertion was how will we combine a full-size keyboard in a sub-notebook kind issue, which was the 700 collection at the moment. So the design began in 1993 and the product got here out in early 1995, “ Bhatia sheds mild on the event of the ThinkPad 701C.
Maybe essentially the most distinctive factor that made the ThinkPad 701C so completely different from different notebooks was its fold-out keyboard. (Picture credit score: Lenovo)
From the surface, the ThinkPad 701C was an ordinary-looking IBM laptop computer, all again and stable and a boxy, right-angled exterior case design. However if you open the lid, the true magic occurs. Karidis had found out a strategy to match a full-sized keyboard right into a 9.7-inch laptop computer chassis by dividing the keyboard into two interlocking items that folded out and in as you opened and closed the laptop computer’s lid. So the lid is closed, each items lie flat within the case. As and when the laptop computer lid is opened, it lifts the 2 items and stretches the keyboard past the case, identical to when a Butterfly opens its wings.
“There have been different debates inside IBM at that time. Ought to we name this the IBM ThinkPad butterfly? There was quite a lot of forwards and backwards. Ultimately, we determined to not come out with a brand new model title,” says Bhatia who joined IBM in 1999 and had the chance to work with Richard Sapper, the economic designer behind the unique ThinkPad, launched in 1992.
“The advertising and marketing group did a improbable job round 1995 after they would place these little advertisements in newspapers, and with only a image of a butterfly. There was quite a lot of buzz and pleasure across the ThinkPad 701C, one thing the trade had not seen in 1995,” he added.
The ‘butterfly’ keyboard primarily expands when the laptop computer lid is opened. (Picture credit score: Lenovo)
Bhatia remembers John Karidis and his fellow group members together with Sam Lucente, Richard Sapper and Robert P. Tennant began engaged on the ThinkPad 701C in 1993. “This challenge was codenamed Butterfly, when John Karidis and the group designed what they virtually considered wings of an airplane, just like the High Gun film,” he stated.“We had Yamato Lab, we had our designers at Analysis Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina and Richard Sapper himself, a German-based in Milan,” says Bhatia. “So it really was a world product improvement, even again within the day.”
The spectacular foldout butterfly keyboard had a promising and game-changing idea to deal with the real-life downside of stuffing a full-sized keyboard into a conveyable laptop computer, although the launch of notebooks with bigger shows quickly made the necessity for such a keyboard redundant. “When the butterfly keyboard was created, it was there to resolve an issue,” Bhatia says. “The primary criticism from our clients again then was the cramped keyboard and what the 701C did was actually remedy that buyer downside.”
Due to the butterfly keyboard design, the ThinkPad 701C featured a full-sized keyboard. (Picture credit score: Lenovo YouTube video screengrab)
When IBM launched the ThinkPad 701C in 1995, it was an on the spot hit amongst enterprise travellers and made the corporate cool once more. As a matter of truth, this laptop computer holds a spot in MoMA’s everlasting assortment in New York Metropolis. The ThinkPad 701C additionally made numerous appearances in Hollywood’s greatest films launched on the time together with GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan’s debut movie as James Bond and Mission Unattainable, starring Tom Cruise.
Whereas many don’t keep in mind the ThinkPad 701C after 26 years of its launch, Bhatia says the laptop computer remains to be in sizzling demand among the many collector neighborhood. The truth is, he says quite a lot of Lenovo’s industrial designers have the ThinkPad 701C. “After we discuss in regards to the high 10 ThinkPads, this positively exhibits up because the primary or in all probability the highest two or three as probably the most common merchandise ever.”
