Adam Osborne

Creator of the first commercially successful portable computer, Osborne transformed personal computing in the early 1980s.

Adam Osborne was born in Thailand in 1939 to British parents and spent much of his childhood in India and Sri Lanka. His father was a follower and secretary of the Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba. Osborne was educated in England, where he attended university and earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. He later earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware.

After completing his doctorate, Osborne worked as a chemical engineer for Shell Development Company in Emeryville, California. He grew dissatisfied with that career and turned his attention to the emerging field of computing. He wrote a manual for Intel's 8008 microprocessor, which Intel published in 1972. That experience led him to found Adam Osborne and Associates in 1972, a technical publishing company based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The company produced a series of accessible, low-cost books about microcomputers and programming aimed at a general audience. These books helped demystify computing for thousands of readers during the early microcomputer era. In 1979, McGraw-Hill acquired Adam Osborne and Associates, and Osborne received a substantial sum from the sale.

With that capital, Osborne founded Osborne Computer Corporation in 1980. The company released the Osborne 1 in 1981—the first commercially successful portable computer. The machine weighed approximately 24 pounds and came bundled with a significant software package, which helped justify its $1,795 price and drove strong early sales.

Osborne Computer Corporation grew rapidly but soon encountered serious difficulties. Osborne publicly announced successor models before they were ready to ship, a blunder that caused customers to cancel orders for the existing Osborne 1 while waiting for the newer machines. This phenomenon became known in the industry as the "Osborne Effect." The company filed for bankruptcy in 1983.

Following the collapse of Osborne Computer Corporation, Adam Osborne returned to writing and publishing. He founded Paperback Software International in 1983, which marketed low-cost software products. That venture also ran into legal trouble when Lotus Development Corporation sued Paperback Software for copyright infringement over a spreadsheet product; Lotus prevailed in 1990. Osborne later moved to India, where he worked on software ventures until health problems curtailed his activities. He died in 2003.