History of Laptops - Dulmont Magnum/Kookaburra

Dulmont Magnum/Kookaburra

Another contender for the first true laptop was the Dulmont Magnum, designed Barry Wilkinson and Terry Crews Engineering Manager at Dulmison in 1982 and released in Australia in 1983 It included an 8x80 display in a lid that closed against the keyboard. It was based on the MS-DOS operating system and applications stored in ROM (A:) and also supported removable modules in expansion slots (B: and C:) that could be custom programmed EPROM or standard word processing and spreadsheet applications. However, the Magnum had no nonvolatile memory, but could suspend and retain memory in RAM, including a RAM Disk (D:). A separate expansion box provided dual 5.25" floppy or 10MB hard disk storage. Dulmont was eventually taken over by Time Office Computers, who marketed the Magnum internationally in 16 and 25 line LCD versions, and also introduced the brandname Kookaburra to emphasize its Australian origins.