The Original Laptop

From Robert Fox, "News Track", Communications of the ACM, vol. 40, no. 10 (October 1997), p. 12.

In 1776 Founding Father Thomas Jefferson designed a mahogany lap desk and used it to draft the U.S. Declaration of Independence during a trip to Philadelphia. You can view the original in the Smithsonian or have a replica made by cabinetmaker Michael Barba barbchal@mail.pil.net for $495. Today's laptops are five to ten times more expensive than Jefferson's lap desk, require batteries and software, and probably hold far fewer brilliant thoughts.

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