It was originally a lab-top, where scientists would move portable computers from Lab station (work area) to lab station. The term has become a bit archaic, but I use it.
Share
Computing.net: Question & Answers Forum
Since the first IBM compatible PC didn’t come out till 1981, it would be difficult to find a lap top in the 1970s. The term lap top wasn’t coined until 1983.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laptop
The very first portable computer was the IBN 5100, But look at the price! $8,975 minimum and weighing in at 24kgs it was certainly no lap top and probably needed a mains power supply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100
The very first consumer portable computer, that is one that could be carried around and set up anywhere and didn’t cost a small fortune, was the Osborne 1, also 1981.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1
It was so heavy the last place you would think of putting it was on your lap. The term lap tap didn’t emerge much later until portable computers became light enough to sit on your lap.
In the 1970s anything that didn’t need a whole room to itself was so basic that they were considered little more than expensive toys, like the Commodore Pet and Tandy TRS-80, both late 1970s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commod…
Just to give you an indication of how easy it is for the uninitiated to get confused, I used to think that the RS in RS232 stood for Radio Shack. I found out different when I discovered that the IBM PC also had an RS 232 Interface.
What you would have had in the 1970s is a dumb terminal sitting on a bench top connected to a mainframe or mini computer elsewhere with a team of computer operators to look after it. Here is an example of computer technology from the Mid 1970s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair…
This was the first computer aimed at the consumer which some guy called Bill Gates wrote a BASIC Interpreter while he was still in collage. I doubt very much if it was ever used as a serious research tool in a laboratory. At that time any decent computer would have cost many thousands of dollars.
So now who is showing their ignorance. None of the links I posted mention lab-top, let alone lap-top. I know this because I was around in the 1970s and cut my teeth on a TRS-80. The fact that the only reference that can be found for lab-top is in the urban dictionary is a pretty good indication that it was never a recognised term with the computer field.
Lab-top is a term I have only come across recently, years rather than decades. Besides being grammatically unsound, it was probably coined by people who have never seen the inside of a laboratory in their life.
It almost certainly came about by people making the same mistake as Justin Bieber did with the “sixteenth” chapel.
Stuart