Closed, it appears just about like some other laptop computer manufactured in 1995.
To make sure, it’s extra compact than most—making it, within the parlance of the day, a subnotebook. But it surely’s nonetheless comically thick, standing nearly as tall as 4 MacBook Airs stacked on one another. That top is required to accommodate a number of applied sciences later rendered out of date by technological progress, resembling a dial-up fax/modem, an infrared port, two PCMCIA growth card slots, and a cumbersome connector for an exterior docking station.
However then you definately open it up. And as you do, one thing completely distinctive occurs.
Thirty-five of the laptop computer’s keys glide out to the left in a cluster. One other 49 swivel downward and to the precise. By the point you’ve raised the display screen into place, these 84 keys have assembled themselves right into a keyboard that’s 11.5” vast—despite the fact that the laptop computer’s case is barely 9.7” vast. The result’s the holiest of Nineties computing holy grails: comfortable, no-compromises typing on a laptop computer that’s—once more, by the requirements of three a long time in the past—extremely moveable.
This story is a part of 1995 Week, the place we’ll revisit a few of the most fascinating, surprising, and confounding developments in tech 30 years in the past.
I may solely be speaking about IBM’s ThinkPad 701, essentially the most buzzworthy PC of 1995. Its increasing keyboard, formally referred to as the TrackWrite, stays higher identified by its code-name of “Butterfly,” referencing the spreading-wing-like impact because it slid into place. (IBM’s butterfly keyboard is to not be confused with Apple’s a lot later, famously wretched keyboard of the identical nickname.)
The ThinkPad 701 was a small pc by 1995 requirements, but its keyboard was as spacious as they acquired. [Photo courtesy of Lenovo]
Most wonderful tech merchandise don’t keep wonderful endlessly. “Superb—for its time” is mostly pretty much as good because it will get. However I don’t hesitate to explain the ThinkPad 701 as wonderful, full cease. It’s among the best issues the expertise trade has ever achieved with transferring components.
Although the idea could sound faintly Rube Goldbergian, it labored shockingly effectively. Lifting the display screen set off a system of hid gears and levers that propelled the 2 sections of keyboard into place with balletic grace. As soon as assembled, there was no seen seam between the sections, and—regardless of the overhang they created on each side of the pc—no droop. Closing the lid neatly reversed the method.
Even the assured sound the keyboard produced because it slid out and in—someplace between a whirrrr and a whooosh, culminating in a satisfying click on—was pleasing to the ear, as if IBM had paid consideration to the acoustic expertise in its personal proper.
Most computer systems can be onerous to promote in a 15-second TV business. However all IBM needed to do was convey the ThinkPad 701’s petite dimension after which present what occurred whenever you opened it. Mission achieved, with time to spare.
Lengthy after the ThinkPad 701 left the market, it nonetheless felt like magic. David Hill, who turned the ThinkPad’s design chief in 1995 and continued within the position after IBM offered its PC division to Lenovo a decade later, saved one available to reveal to guests resembling school college students. “Each time I pulled that factor out and confirmed it to folks, the response can be the identical,” he remembers. “There can be this deafening silence. After which somebody would say, ‘Do it once more!’”
When the ThinkPad 701 was new, laptop computer patrons acknowledged it because the engineering marvel it was. A Businesweek article cited gross sales of 215,000 models and stated it was 1995’s best-selling PC laptop computer. But by the point that story appeared in February 1996, the 701 had been discontinued. IBM by no means made something prefer it once more. Neither did anybody else.
So how may a laptop computer broadly regarded to have solved one in all cell computing’s basic issues come and go so rapidly? Therein lies a story.
The subnotebook conundrum
In case you skim by sufficient pictures of typical laptops of the mid-Nineties—such because the 65-plus fashions reviewed in an August 1993 PC Journal cowl story—two issues will strike you about their shows. First, they’re actually dinky. Almost all those PC Magazine lined measured between 8.5” and 9.5” diagonally. Immediately, in contrast, most mainstream laptop computer screens begin at 13” and go up from there.
Secondly, most mid-Nineties laptop computer screens are surrounded by overwhelmingly gigantic bezels, as in the event that they had been framed, matted pictures. From our Twenty first-century vantage level, they give the impression of being bizarre, since pc makers later spent years shrinking the bezels down—each an aesthetic enchancment and a strategy to match a roomier show in a smaller case. However by supersizing the bezels, ’90s producers gave themselves sufficient room to equip laptops with desktop-like keyboards. On the time, much more than now, that was a completely essential design objective.
The primary PC maker that found out methods to design a subnotebook-sized laptop computer with a desktop-sized keyboard would actually have one thing.
Now, there had been patrons who craved portability a lot that they had been keen to just accept a shrunken keyboard. Subnotebooks catered to them. However these miniature laptops had been a unusual area of interest. Reviewing the ThinkPad 500, IBM’s first subnotebook, for InfoWorld in 1993, my buddy Fredric Paul concluded that “contact typing is feasible however not precisely enjoyable. A bit extra thought in regards to the correct type issue may need allowed extra nice typing.”
Everybody else making subnotebooks confronted the identical subject. ”There was a mismatch between the largest-size display screen and a full dimension keyboard,” says Hill. “In case you wished to make one thing that primarily hugged to the edges of the display screen, the keyboard needed to be considerably compromised when it comes to the flexibility to kind on it.”
It was apparent that the primary PC maker that found out methods to design a subnotebook-sized laptop computer with a desktop-sized keyboard would actually have one thing. Except, that’s, the entire thing was an not possible dream.
In 1992, design legend Richard Sapper had given the primary ThinkPad its squared-off black case and pink TrackPoint pointing nub—components which have confirmed so sturdy that they’re nonetheless with us in new ThinkPads from Lenovo. As IBM contemplated the subnotebook market, Sapper tinkered with strategies for getting huge keyboards into small laptops—“Folding the keyboard on high of itself, with wings that may fold outward, and another concepts,” says Hill. “However they made the pc thicker. And that was not one thing that was fashionable.”
A uncommon closeup of the ThinkPad 701’s keyboard within the strategy of increasing, revealing the world beneath the 2 wedges of keys. [Photo: Harry McCracken]
Impractical although the objective of a keyboard that expanded appeared, it continued to drift round inside IBM. Amongst these making an attempt to unravel it was John Karidis (1958-2012), an worker on the firm’s Yorktown Heights, New York, lab whom Hill calls “essentially the most gifted mechanical engineer I’ve ever labored with in my whole profession.” His earlier initiatives at IBM had ranged broadly, from high-speed printers to chip testing tools.
Karidis “actually loved the cadre of inventors and makers,” say his brother, George Karidis—an inventor himself, as was their father, a nuclear engineer for Westinghouse. “He welcomed that [IBM] was Worldwide Enterprise Machines, and he and others made machines. He had a deep focus at a second’s discover on any subject. He didn’t have a worry of failure, however simply an eagerness to pursue issues.”
Someday, Karidis had the epiphany that made the ThinkPad 701 doable. “He was enjoying with some picket constructing blocks together with his daughter, and he observed that in the event you take two triangular blocks and slide them previous one another, it type of makes a rectangle that modifications its side ratio,” says Hill. By breaking a keyboard into sections that slid, you would possibly be capable to enhance its width with out resorting to a folding design that added to the pc’s top.
To check that concept out, Karidis “ended up photocopying a keyboard after which slicing it out,” says his brother George. “He noticed the way it may translate. And he went residence and confirmed it to his spouse, and he or she type of checked out him humorous and stated, ‘’They pay you to do that?’”
IBM used robots to confirm that the cut up keyboard was strong sufficient to resist 25,000 openings and closings.
In his 2017 e book How the ThinkPad Modified the World and is Shaping the Future, Arimasa Naitoh, who led a ThinkPad engineering crew in Yamato, Japan, for many years, writes of an IBM govt on the firm’s Raleigh, North Carolina workplace. Studying of Karidis’s keyboard, he pushed a plan to include it in a laptop computer. That govt, Naitoh says, was Tim Prepare dinner—years earlier than he joined Apple. Prepare dinner’s IBM duties concerned manufacturing and distribution, not product improvement, and he left the corporate effectively earlier than the ThinkPad 701 was launched. Pondering of him as one in all its fathers could also be going means past the documented proof. Nonetheless, the thoughts boggles: Probably the most fascinating laptop computer Apple’s eventual CEO performed a hand in hatching won’t have been a MacBook.
Bringing Karidis’s brainstorm to market took time. In 1992, the corporate had shaped an analysts’ council that gave a choose group of trade watchers the chance to see merchandise underneath improvement and supply suggestions. Its individuals included Artistic Methods analyst (and Quick Firm contributor) Tim Bajarin; the group nonetheless exists at the moment as a part of Lenovo’s PC enterprise and Bajarin stays a member.
At one assembly, the council acquired a preview of Karidis’s design—although not but in a working laptop computer. ”It wasn’t a real machine, however they confirmed us the idea, confirmed us how the butterfly keyboard would possibly work,” explains Bajarin. “And by the way in which, they did actually good mockups. They weren’t cheapo stuff. To an individual, we stated, ‘If you are able to do it, you must do it.’”
They may do it, and did—simply not as quickly as they’d hoped. Naitoh writes that the ThinkPad 701 was initially presupposed to ship by the top of 1994. It missed that deadline, delayed by the calls for of engineering and testing such an unprecedented product. For instance, IBM used robots to confirm that the cut up keyboard was strong sufficient to resist 25,000 openings and closings.
Mr. Bond’s laptop computer
On March 6, 1995, IBM lastly introduced its new subnotebook. Obtainable in a wide range of configurations, its checklist costs ranged from $3,799–$5,649, or about $8,000–$11,900 in 2025 {dollars}—not low cost, however not absurd on the time. Probably the most economical variant, the ThinkPad 701Cs, had a ten.4” display screen—roomy on the time—nevertheless it was a “passive matrix” LCD, which tended to depart colours wanting a tad washed out. The one you actually wished was the 701C, which sported a vivid active-matrix display screen of the identical dimension.
In a narrative in regards to the 701’s arrival, The New York Instances’ Laurie Flynn stated that IBM may need bother maintaining with demand, partly as a result of it had gotten potential patrons too excited too early. She additionally famous that the 701 used “the older Intel 486 chip fairly than the sooner Pentium”—an artifact of its gradual gestation that may come again to chunk IBM.
Reviewers, whom IBM had seeded with ThinkPad 701 models earlier than its launch, weren’t impressed by the laptop computer’s growing old processor and located its battery life iffy. Due to the butterfly keyboard, they nonetheless hailed the system as a cell computing landmark. “The $5,000 ThinkPad 701C has efficiently taken the sub out of subnotebook,” wrote PC Journal’s Brian Nadel. The Wall Avenue Journal’s Walt Mossberg referred to as it “a real gem of a pc” and—greater than 20 years later—“most likely essentially the most uncommon and, I believe, in some methods intelligent laptop computer I ever reviewed.”
IBM embraced the ThinkPad 701’s gadget-like qualities on this journal advert. [Image via Google Books]
Typically talking, IBM was a businesslike model and ThinkPad advertising and marketing leaned into sensible benefits. With the 701, nonetheless, the corporate wasn’t afraid of gadget-y associations. ”James Bond, as a frequent traveler, will definitely carry this wonderful 4.5 lb. extremely moveable pc on his subsequent mission,” declared one advert, enjoying up options such because the built-in answering machine and fax functionality. That November, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) actually did idiot round with a 701 in GoldenEye—though solely fleetingly and to the obvious annoyance of Q. (Fittingly, Hill says that Karidis was generally known as “the Q of IBM.”) The next 12 months, the pc additionally confirmed up briefly in Tom Cruise’s first Mission Inconceivable movie, which is healthier identified for its Apple product placement.
On this video promo shot at Disney World’s Epcot Middle,an IBM worker walks by the 701’s options. We additionally glimpse the tools the corporate used to check the pc and random theme park guests being impressed by the increasing keyboard.
The ThinkPad 701 garnered some weighty recognition, together with 27 design awards. It was even exhibited at New York Metropolis’s Museum of Trendy Artwork. However regardless of the publicity and plaudits, its clock ran out earlier than the 12 months ended. In a “{Hardware} Withdrawal” checklist launched on November 21, 1995, IBM introduced that it will cease advertising and marketing the 701 as of December 21. Items that had already made their means into distribution channels would stay obtainable into 1996, however the 701 was a lifeless pc strolling, lower than 9 months after its debut.
A number of elements contributed to IBM’s determination to discontinue such a high-profile system. One among them was its Intel 486 chip, which had felt a tad outdated when the 701 was launched and grown solely extra so by late 1995. Updating the design with a Pentium wouldn’t have been so simple as plopping in a more moderen processor. As an alternative, the choice would have set off a cascading sequence of engineering challenges regarding conserving the highly effective Pentium working cool. Doable, definitely—but additionally a big enterprise.
“I must say that [the ThinkPad 701’s] greatest success is the halo that created round ThinkPad and IBM, as a result of it was so wildly inventive,” says Hill. “But it surely did type of miss the wave when it comes to the announcement relative to the chip. So it was a bit of bit late.”
Bajarin notes that that IBM informed members of its analysts’ council that the TrackWrite’s keyboard had some reliability points, since its left and proper edges overflowed the case and had been unsupported in use. That was very true amongst customers who mistreated their dear new laptops: “Typically they’d throw it of their backpack with out getting the keyboard closed utterly,” he remembers.
The nice widening
Finally, although, the ThinkPad 701 wasn’t achieved in by its personal limitations. As moveable computer systems turned extra fashionable, progress in show expertise had made it doable for PC makers to make use of bigger screens. Producers had been additionally getting higher at becoming a laptop computer’s essential elements into much less area. These advances allow them to design a brand new technology of skinny, mild laptops that went past the constraints of subnotebooks. As soon as IBM may make a light-weight laptop computer with a wider display screen, “the necessity for an increasing keyboard was now not important,” says George Karidis. “It will have simply been a novelty.”
In his e book, Naitoh writes that the 701 was launched amid rivalry between IBM’s Raleigh and Yamato groups that was resolved by centralizing ThinkPad improvement in Yamato. Put in control of figuring out the butterfly keyboard’s future, he reluctantly concluded its time had handed and suspended additional work on it.
In 1996, IBM launched the ThinkPad 560. Its 12.1” show was significantly roomier than the ThinkPad’s 701’s 10.4-incher. The case was two inches wider than the 701, providing loads of area for a desktop-like keyboard—no butterfly mechanism required. But the 560 was additionally a lot thinner (1.2”) and lighter (4 lb.) than the 701, attaining a type issue that may develop into generally known as “ultraportable.”
A patent drawing exhibiting how the ThinkPad 701’s keyboard slid into place. [Image via Google Patents]
The ThinkPad 701 had been a memorable blip. The ThinkPad 560’s steadiness of portability, energy, and luxury presaged the place your entire trade would focus its power for years to come back. The tip end result has been laptops resembling at the moment’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13. With a 14” display screen, it’s 53% thinner at its thickest level and 46% lighter than the ThinkPad 560. “Lenovo continues to flatten this stuff to the purpose that it hardly even must be any thinner,” says Hill.
Although the 701’s butterfly keyboard couldn’t survive on coolness alone, “There have been a few makes an attempt to convey it again with different working methods, like a type of a sensible e book type of machine or different issues of that nature, however we by no means may get the the traction,” says Hill. “The truth is, John [Karidis] and I labored on one the place solely half the keyboard moved.” Even now, it could be untimely to imagine the thought won’t ever resurface in a brand new machine: In 2021, the historical past web site Laptop computer Retrospective reported that Lenovo had filed a brand new patent for a magnetic increasing keyboard, probably to be used with tablets.
Interviewed by Cnet’s John G. Spooner in 2001, Karidis didn’t appear haunted by his invention’s failure to vary computing in any everlasting means. ”The butterfly keyboard was now not essential, as a result of folks moved to bigger shows, particularly on this geography,” he informed Spooner. “The place the butterfly method is sensible is the place you need the most important keyboard doable together with an 8-inch or 10-inch show. We’ll wait and see whether or not the market want develops (once more) for that.” To date, it hasn’t—nevertheless it’s enjoyable to suppose it may.
Butterflies are endlessly
Again in 1995, I didn’t even contemplate shopping for a ThinkPad 701. Even in its least expensive configuration, it was far, far exterior my value vary. Each of my dad and mom acquired ones as work machines, although. I recall Ma and Pa McCracken being very proud of their hers-and-his ThinkPads, though my mom, who largely used hers on the sofa when working from residence, found that extra cat hair clogged the keyboard mechanism.
Whereas engaged on this text, I spotted I wanted to reacquaint myself with the 701 in particular person. I ended up snagging one off eBay. Its TrackWrite keyboard continues to operate completely, and it nonetheless boots into Home windows 95. Nevertheless, like many 30-year-old laptops, mine has fallen sufferer to its superior age. It has a corroded battery, a flaky energy swap, and a case whose rubberized black coating has decomposed to a syrupy consistency.
My newly acquired ThinkPad 701C (left) and a scale mannequin model launched by IBM Japan in 2001 to rejoice the twentieth anniversary of the ThinkPad line. [Photo: Harry McCracken]
A ThinkPad 701 proprietor who goes by the web deal with of Polymatt hasn’t simply lovingly restored his personal laptop computer. He’s created Venture Butterfly, a web site filled with step-by-step restore guides: The right way to sand and repaint its case, 3D-print substitute components, fabricate a substitute battery, and extra. Every little thing is open supply, together with recordsdata that enable the printing of substitute decals for icons resembling those indicating the laptop computer’s energy swap, printer port, headphone jack, and different options.
Like me, Polymatt is a second-generation fan whose father introduced a 701 residence throughout its authentic second of glory. “I used to be immediately interested in it,” he says. “He had some earlier ThinkPads, however this factor was simply supercool. I’ve actually fond reminiscences of enjoying video video games on it and simply being fascinated by what it was. It helped cement my curiosity in expertise.” The 701 lingered in his reminiscence. Years later, it resurfaced as a chance to contribute one thing significant to the neighborhood of classic computing fanatics.
As a factor of marvel, the ThinkPad 701 continues to transcend its personal obsolescence.
Polymatt isn’t the one 701 proprietor who’s gone all out to convey the machine into the Twenty first century. Karl Buchka managed to switch a 701’s guts with the motherboard from a contemporary Framework modular laptop computer and provides it an iPad’s Retina show. Theoretically, an intrepid modder may do one thing comparable with any outdated pc. It’s simply that few mid-90s laptops stay fascinating sufficient to encourage such creativity.
Solely a small group of hackers have the persistence, ardour, and technical chops to accumulate a ThinkPad 701—Polymatt says he’s had 20 or 30 through the years—and repair it up. However a far bigger swath of humanity remains to be charmed by John Karidis’s butterfly keyboard. YouTube is awash in 701-related movies, from a wonderful documentary to folks merely being entranced by it. As a factor of marvel, it continues to transcend its personal obsolescence.
Simply by itself, Polymatt’s YouTube Wanting a 701 opening and shutting has been considered greater than 600,000 instances. “The enjoyable factor is, I see the feedback coming in from individuals who suppose that it’s a contemporary factor and are enthusiastic about it,” he says. “After which I see individuals who understand it and are like, ‘Oh, they should convey this again.’ I get the entire spectrum of reactions.”
Sure, a few of the YouTube commenters helpfully level out that the appearance of vast screens way back eradicated the necessity for an increasing keyboard. Even so, it’s robust to look at the video simply as soon as after which click on away. In any case these years, essentially the most pure response to seeing the ThinkPad 701 in motion stays “Do it once more.”
