MADRAS, 27 March 2003 — Adam Osborne, the 64-year-old inventor of the world’s first portable computer, died in his sleep yesterday of a brain disease at his summer home in southern India’s Kodaikanal Hills.

His sister Katya Douglas, who had been caring for Osborne in India, said her brother had been fighting a losing battle with an incurable brain disease.

“He died quietly and with dignity. His ailment caused minor strokes and restricted his mobility,” she told AFP. Osborne, a British immigrant and long-time resident of Berkeley, California, was buried at a local cemetery near his southern Indian home.

He had come to India from the US in 1993 following business setbacks and failing health. Osborne launched the IT industry’s breakthrough portable computer in 1981 at a computer fair in the US.

The suitcase computer weighing 23 pounds was seen as an amazing effort back then and proved a runaway hit with consumers. It made Osborne one of the first millionaires in the computer industry.

Two years later his business ran into financial difficulties when he announced that he had made a superior computer months in advance of the launch, prompting potential clients to defer purchases.

The stocks piled up and led to the collapse of Osborne Computers in 1983.