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The History of American-Made Laptops

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The current thing in tech and business is Anduril & Qualcomm’s new American-made laptop.

Today’s Lineup

Re:Build Co-Founder & CEO Miles Arnone at 12:00 PM
Ramp CTO Rahul Sengottuvelu at 12:10 PM
Atreides Management Managing Partner & CIO Gavin Baker at 12:20 PM
Kino Co-Founder Luke Igel at 12:50 PM

Run of Show

The History of American-Made Laptops

Anduril and Qualcomm just announced a new American-made laptop called BlueChip. The first laptop, which will be available in 2027, will be built for government, defense, first responders, and public safety workers.

In the BlueChip launch video, Palmer explains how American engineers built the world’s first modern computer, and that breakthrough kicked off the computer industry. According to Palmer, “any country that can’t build its own computers, can’t secure them. If you don’t control your technology, you can’t control your future.”

So we wanted to see how true that is, and trace the history of American-made laptops from the industry’s earliest days to today.

The Osborne 1, founded in California and built in 1981, was the first commercially successful portable computer. It had a tiny five-inch screen, two floppy drives, 64 KB of memory, and was priced at $1,795. The company eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1983.

GRiD Systems, which was founded in 1979, launched GRiD Compass in 1982. This is the first true laptop-looking device that was built with a folding screen. It was priced around $8,000 and was used by NASA aboard the Space Shuttle

Then in the late 80s and early 90s, we saw the first mass-market laptops in the hands of consumers. Houston-based Compaq launched the LTE in 1989. It delivered a nearly desktop-equivalent IBM-compatible PC in a six-pound, notebook-sized package, with battery power, and familiar floppy disks.

Shortly after in 1991, Apple launched the PowerBook. Apple reportedly generated approximately $1B in PowerBook revenue in its first year.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, companies like Dell, Apple, Compaq, and IBM were increasingly relying on manufacturers in Japan, Taiwan, and China to actually build the laptops. But some laptops like Dell’s notebooks and the IBM ThinkPad T30, were still being assembled in the United States into the early 2000s. Lenovo even reopened their North Carolina manufacturing line in 2012 to bring back laptop production. But it never became a large-scale revival of the American laptop industry.

But since the early to mid-2000s, American laptop manufacturing has never returned to the levels it reached in the 80s and 90s.

Anduril and Qualcomm are trying to change that. More than 90% of the procurement cost for BlueChip’s prototype components already comes from U.S. or allied-country suppliers. Anduril also plans to manufacture the laptops in the U.S., including circuit board assembly at its Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio.

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