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Why IBM's Amazing 'Sliding Keyboard' ThinkPad 701 Never Survived Past 1995
Fast Company's tech editor Harry McCracken (also harrymccSlashdot reader #1,641,347) writes: As part of Fast Company's "1995 week", I wrote about IBM's ThinkPad 701, the famous model with an expanding "butterfly" keyboard [which could be stretched from 9.7-inches to 11.5 inches]. By putting full-s...
The article calls the butterfly ThinkPad "one of the best things the technology industry has ever done with moving parts," and revisits 1995's race"to design a subnotebook-sized laptop with a desktop-sized keyboard." Lifting the screen set off a system of concealed gears and levers that propelled the two sections of keyboard into position with balletic grace... A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995's best-selling PC laptop. Once IBM could make a lightweight laptop with a wider screen, "the need for an expanding keyboard was no longer essential," says [butterfly ThinkPad engineer] George Karidis.
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