IBM's ThinkPad 701 was once 9.7 inches wide, but its butterfly structure allowed it to house a full-sized 11.5-inch keyboard.
The early ThinkPad 'ThinkPad 701' released in 1995 housed an 11.5-inch keyboard in a 9.7-inch case. Technology editor Harry McCracken explains how it was housed and why it was designed like this.
This IBM ThinkPad was astounding in 1995—and still is - Fast Company
You can see how the ThinkPad 701 works in the commercial that aired when it was released. When you open the screen, 35 of the keys stored inside slide out to the left and 49 to the right, creating a keyboard that sticks out from the body.
IBM ThinkPad 701 Commercial (1995) - YouTube
The ThinkPad 701's mechanism was revolutionary, and it was reported at the time as being 'the best-selling laptop of 1995.' However, production of the computer was discontinued less than a year after its release.
At the time, laptops had overwhelmingly larger bezels than those of the 2020s, making it easier to fit a keyboard in. However, there was a fair amount of dissatisfaction with the small width of the keyboard in addition to the display size of the laptop, so the idea of an unfolding keyboard was raised within IBM.
One of the people who worked on this problem was John Caridis, a researcher at IBM. One day, while playing with wooden building blocks with his daughter, Caridis noticed that 'if you slide two triangular blocks, they become a rectangle with a different aspect ratio.' This gave him the idea of splitting the keyboard and sliding it.
According to Kazumasa Naito, who was involved in the early development of ThinkPad and is currently the vice president of Lenovo Japan at the time of writing, it was Tim Cook, who was an executive at IBM at the time, who pushed forward Caridis' idea.
When the ThinkPad 701 finally made its appearance on March 6, 1995, it was met with criticism for things unrelated to the keyboard, such as 'the keyboard is attractive, but the processor is outdated,' but it was also praised as 'a true gem of a PC.'
'IBM was a fairly business-like brand, and the ThinkPad line was very much about practicality,' McCracken explains. 'But the ThinkPad 701 was marketed as a gadget that was both practical and entertaining, with commercials saying things like, 'James Bond would carry this around with him.''
In the ad below, filmed at Disney World's Epcot Center, an IBM employee can be seen explaining the ThinkPad 701's features, while theme park visitors are impressed with the keyboard.
IBM Thinkpad 701 promotional video - YouTube
The ThinkPad 701 received 27 design awards and was even exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but production was discontinued in just nine months. McCracken explains that there are several reasons for the discontinuation, 'One of the reasons is that development was delayed and the chips on the computer became outdated.'
David Hill, who became ThinkPad's design chief in 1995 and continued in that role after IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo a decade later, keeps a ThinkPad 701 to show to visitors. 'Whenever I take it out and show it to people, I get the same reaction: silence, and then someone says, 'Do it again!' There have been several attempts to revive it since it was discontinued, but it never gained enough traction,' Hill said.
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