Epson HX-20 Laptop Computer

The Epson HX-20 (also known as the HC-20) was the first laptop computer. It was invented in July 1980 by Yukio Yokozawa, who worked for Suwa Seikosha, a branch of Japanese company Seiko (now Seiko Epson), receiving a patent for the invention. It was announced in 1981 as the HC-20 in Japan, and was introduced by Epson in North America as the HX-20 in 1981, at the COMDEX computer show in Las Vegas, where it drew significant attention for its portability. It had a mass-market release in July 1982, as the HC-20 in Japan and as the Epson HX-20 in North America. The size of an A4 notebook and weighing 1.6 kg, it was both the first notebook and handheld computer, for which it was hailed by BusinessWeek magazine as the “fourth revolution in personal computing”.