" The
Epson HX-20 (also known as the
HC-20) was the first "true"
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 at the 1981
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 hailed by
BusinessWeek magazine as the "fourth revolution in
personal computing. "