How a toy impressed the ‘butterfly’ keyboard design of the long-lasting IBM ThinkPad 701C

Every laptop computer will not be the identical and each laptop computer will not be the IBM ThinkPad 701C. Arguably probably the most fascinating ultraportable pc ever made, the IBM ThinkPad 701C’s distinctive full-size butterfly keyboard — designed by John Karidis and impressed by his daughter’s toy — within the compact laptop computer was one thing remarkable on the time.
“The biggest reason the butterfly keyboard came out was [these] business laptops were obviously very popular with business folks and the biggest complaint that we got from customers was the competing laptops were too small,” Dilip Bhatia, Chief Customer Experience Officer and Vice-President of User & Customer Experience at Lenovo, remembers the IBM ThinkPad 701C and the way it modified the marketplace for ultraportable enterprise laptops.

The ThinkPad 700 collection idea was launched by International Business Machines Corporation (Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC enterprise and the long-lasting ThinkPad model in 2005) to create a brand new class of enterprise laptops that’s simpler to hold and use. The problem for the group was to suit a full-sized keyboard alongside a ten.4-inch LCD color show into the subsequent ThinkPad 701C transportable laptop computer.
To clear up the distinctive design downside, Dr. John Karidis, an IBM distinguished engineer, took on the problem to develop the “Butterfly” keyboard. Bhatia explains that Karidis, a mechanical engineer with IBM’s Personal Computing Division at the moment, received the concept of a foldout butterfly keyboard by observing his three-year-old daughter who was constructing shapes out of her toy blocks. Observing his daughter play with wood blocks, Karidis considered reducing the board throughout the quantity 4, T, H and M keys. That manner the board was damaged into two distinctive movable elements. That was how the “Butterfly” keyboard took place.
“At that point, the one display screen out there was a ten.4-inch display screen. The downside assertion was how can we combine a full-size keyboard in a sub-notebook kind issue, which was the 700 collection at the moment. So the design began in 1993 and the product got here out in early 1995, “ Bhatia sheds gentle on the event of the ThinkPad 701C.
Perhaps probably the most distinctive factor that made the ThinkPad 701C so totally different from different notebooks was its fold-out keyboard. (Image credit score: Lenovo)
From the skin, the ThinkPad 701C was an ordinary-looking IBM laptop computer, all again and strong and a boxy, right-angled exterior case design. But once you open the lid, the true magic occurs. Karidis had found out a strategy to match a full-sized keyboard right into a 9.7-inch laptop computer chassis by dividing the keyboard into two interlocking items that folded out and in as you opened and closed the laptop computer’s lid. So the lid is closed, each items lie flat within the case. As and when the laptop computer lid is opened, it lifts the 2 items and stretches the keyboard past the case, identical to when a Butterfly opens its wings.
“There were other debates within IBM at that point. Should we call this the IBM ThinkPad butterfly? There was a lot of back and forth. Eventually, we decided not to come out with a new brand name,” says Bhatia who joined IBM in 1999 and had the chance to work with Richard Sapper, the economic designer behind the unique ThinkPad, launched in 1992.
“The marketing team did a fantastic job around 1995 when they would place these little ads in newspapers, and with just a picture of a butterfly. There was a lot of buzz and excitement around the ThinkPad 701C, something the industry had not seen in 1995,” he added.
The ‘butterfly’ keyboard basically expands when the laptop computer lid is opened. (Image credit score: Lenovo)
Bhatia remembers John Karidis and his fellow group members together with Sam Lucente, Richard Sapper and Robert P. Tennant began engaged on the ThinkPad 701C in 1993. “This project was codenamed Butterfly, when John Karidis and the team designed what they almost thought of as wings of an airplane, like the Top Gun movie,” he mentioned.“We had Yamato Lab, we had our designers at Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina and Richard Sapper himself, a German-based in Milan,” says Bhatia. “So it truly was a global product development, even back in the day.”
The spectacular foldout butterfly keyboard had a promising and game-changing idea to sort out the real-life downside of stuffing a full-sized keyboard into a transportable laptop computer, although the launch of notebooks with bigger shows quickly made the necessity for such a keyboard redundant. “When the butterfly keyboard was created, it was there to solve a problem,” Bhatia says. “The number one complaint from our customers back then was the cramped keyboard and what the 701C did was really solve that customer problem.”
Thanks to the butterfly keyboard design, the ThinkPad 701C featured a full-sized keyboard. (Image credit score: Lenovo YouTube video screengrab)
When IBM launched the ThinkPad 701C in 1995, it was an prompt hit amongst enterprise travellers and made the corporate cool once more. As a matter of truth, this laptop computer holds a spot in MoMA’s everlasting assortment in New York City. The ThinkPad 701C additionally made numerous appearances in Hollywood’s greatest motion pictures launched on the time together with GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan’s debut movie as James Bond and Mission Impossible, starring Tom Cruise.
While many don’t bear in mind the ThinkPad 701C after 26 years of its launch, Bhatia says the laptop computer continues to be in scorching demand among the many collector neighborhood. In truth, he says a variety of Lenovo’s industrial designers have the ThinkPad 701C. “When we talk about the top 10 ThinkPads, this definitely shows up as the number one or probably the top two or three as one of the most popular products ever.”