Mobile Friendly computing in the early 80s!

3 April 2017

With the dawn of the new Apple iPad we thought it would be fun to have a trip down memory lane with one of our developers who recalls his first ever mobile computer.

It was the early 80s, Michael Jackson's Thriller was top of the charts and our guy was working for a company who specialised in developing all kinds of applications for the transport industry. The majority of applications were built in house, however others were so bespoke that they had to be developed on site at the customer’s premises.

This particular project was to plan the most efficient way to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables to their wholesale customers using their haulage fleet across Europe. Our guy spent three days a week at their location working and two days back in the office.

The mobile computer that he used was the called the Contel CADO - a very revolutionary system back in the day and compared to the large main frame computers it could be considered as a early form of laptop computer.