Ted Selker at IBM Almaden Research had an amazingly successful streak of getting useful innovations from the lab to the market with the ThinkPad, including the TrackPoint (the red joy button), the butterfly keyboard, and the transparent LCD display with removable back cover that works with an overhead projector (at a time when overhead projectors were much more common that expensive video projectors).
IBM Pointing Stick #1 - 10_25_91:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6guBllqPPY&feature=youtu.be...
(Not Edwin Selker!)
Ted Selker Oral History:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpw7Bml_XvI
>He worked for short times at Atari and Xerox PARC before joining IBM in 1985. At IBM, first at T.J. Watson Labs, then at Almaden research labs, he rose to Fellow, inventing the TrackPoint cursor control device, making major contributions to the ThinkPad notebook computer, designing artificial-intelligence help and teaching systems, designing wearable computing devices, researching eye tracking systems, and designing an intelligent "living room of the future".
(Check out his red TrackPoint lapel pin!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_760
>IBM ThinkPad 760CDV - Similar to the 760CD, this unique model had a removable back cover on the LCD that would permit light to shine through for use on an overhead projector.
IBM ThinkPad 701c "butterfly" keyboard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLj3aCfqzOM
Opening and closing IBM ThinkPad 701c with unique keyboard folding mechanism.
ThinkPad TrackPoints - how do they work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3A7LDyizlc
Early TrackPoint prototypes:
I had a 760CDV. That was an amazing machine in an era where you had to carry projector panels around. It never failed to amaze onlookers.
It was brilliantly focused on solving such a practical real-world problem of the era. But its window of opportunity has closed. Today's laptops can't just afford the overhead or support such open transparency. ;)
That sounds really interesting. You don't happen to have any pictures of it? I didn't find anything through Google, just that it existed.
there are pictures of the 755CDV doing that, if that's of any interest:
http://www.lenovoblog.cz/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/3566815....
http://www.lenovoblog.cz/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/755cdv.j...
http://www.lenovoblog.cz/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/thinkpad...
(from http://www.lenovoblog.cz/2016/02/historie-rodiny-notebooku-i... )
https://thinkwiki.de/755
Yeah those pictures show it very well. The only thing you don't really see is the existential dread as you hook your expensive laptop to the projector in an inbalanced fashion using velcro straps....
> Ted Selker at IBM Almaden Research had an amazingly successful streak of getting useful innovations from the lab
I always thought that ThinkPads were done by IBM Japanese RnD centre
He sounds like a ‘product’ guy.
The TrackPoint grew out of his university research, and a lot of user testing and measurement and iterative improvement went into it before IBM allowed him to ship it in a real product. (The youtube video talks about the pressure=>velocity mapping curve they developed and refined.) He collaborated with his father, a material scientist, who designed the rubbery grippy material so it felt just right.