Lee Felsenstein

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Lee Felsenstein (born 1945 in Philadelphia) is a computer engineer who was the designer of the Osborne 1, the first portable computer. As a young man, he was a New Left radical and wrote for the Berkeley Barb, one of the leading underground newspapers.

Before the Osborne, Lee designed the 8080 based "SOL" computer from Processor Technology, the PennyWhistle modem, and other early "S-100" era designs. These existed in a market space with early generation hobbyist microcomputers from Morrow Designs, Cromemco, Altair, and other vendors. His shared-memory alphanumeric video display design, the VDM-1, was widely copied and became the basis for the display architecture of personal computers.

Many of his designs were leaders in cost reducing computer technologies for the purpose of making them available to large markets. His work featured a concern for the social impact of technology. The Community Memory project, with which he was affiliated, was one of the earliest attempts to place networked computer terminals in such places as Berkeley supermarkets to attract casual use by persons from all walks of life passing through and facilitate social interactions among non-technical individuals, in the era before the Internet.

Felsenstein received a BS in EECS from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972.

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