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On this day in 1869, Dmitriy Ivanovich Mendeleyev presented the first Periodic Table of the Elements to the Russian Chemical Society. Mendeleyev developed the table while writing a textbook for the University of St. Petersburg where he was a professor. His presentation, “The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements”, proposed that the Elements, when arranged according to their weights and the number of chemical bonds between their atoms, displayed certain patterns. Using these patterns, he was able to predict the existence of a number elements that had not yet been discovered, including germanium which is now used widely as a semiconductor in transistors.
Unbeknownst to Mendeleyev, several other scientists had produced similar tables, including the English chemist, John Alexander Reina Newlands, who published the idea in 1864 as the Law of Octaves. Today, Mendeleyev is largely credited as the inventor because he was the first to use the Table to predict new elements.
It’s the birthday of computer designer, author, and technical publisher Adam Osborne, born in Thailand in 1939 to British parents. He grew up in Southern India where his parents moved after becoming followers of Sri Ramana Maharshi, an Indian mystic who taught self-examination and practiced silence.
In 1961, Osborne came to the United States to get a PhD at the University of Delaware. After graduating, he went to work for Shell Oil as a chemical engineer but soon became fascinated with computers. He got a job writing programming manuals for Intel and started attending the Homebrew Computer Club, a regular meeting of early personal computer hobbyists in Silicon Valley that included the founders of Apple Computer.
He started his own company that specialized in easy-to-read computer manuals and it was a big success. He said, “The guy who knows about computers is the last person you want to have creating documentation for people who don’t understand them.” (Brainy Quotes)
After selling his publishing company, Osborne moved into hardware and, in 1981, released the Osborne 1, the first portable computer. It weighed 25 pounds and cost $1800. It had two five inch floppy drives and 64k of memory and it was a blockbuster. Within two years, Osborne was selling 10,000 of them a month and had made 70 million dollars. The Osborne 1 was the first personal computer that came with a suite of software including BASIC and WordStar.
Two years later, Osborne announced that he was developing a pair of new machines: an even tinier version called The Vixen and an update to the Osborne 1 known as The Executive. Unfortunately, the announcement convinced customers to hold off buying any more Osborne 1s and the company’s sales collapsed and it filed for bankruptcy before the end of the year. Working with tech journalist John C. Dvorak, Osborne wrote a memoir about the experience and it became a bestseller.
In the 80s, Osborne started Paperback Software, one of the first makers of budget software, but the company floundered after being sued for making a product that was too similar to the famous spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3. Osborne was forced to step down and the company’s loss in the suit became an important precedent in software copyright law.
Suffering from a brain disorder that caused frequent minor strokes, Osborne returned to India where he died in 2003.
additional info from The Register’s obituary of Osborne
All information courtesy of Wikipedia, unless otherwise noted.
Tagged: osborne, Mendeleyev, periodic, table, portable, computer, tech, podcast, hacker, almanac
The osbourne 1 is amazing looking!