Ampere WS-1

Ampere, Inc., a Japanese computer systems company founded by Takashi Kusanagi in the early 1980s, first announced the WS-1 in June 1984 under the prototype name BIG.APL. The WS-1 weighs and occupies a footprint of . Technology journalists noted the laptop's striking, airfoil-esque case design, rendered by Japanese industrial designer Kumeo Tamura—better known as a principal behind the Datsun 240Z coupé. Also present on the WS-1 are two serial ports and a Centronics parallel port, The laptop was later manufactured as a single configuration set at 64 KB, expandable via the aforementioned cartridges to a lower RAM ceiling of 512 KB. The company aimed WS-1 at users of APL, a programming language that uses graphic symbols to represent most functions and operators. John J. Anderson, writing in Creative Computing, called the display an improvement over that included with the earlier Data General/One laptop: "[E]xtremely easy to read, even in less than optimal lighting conditions". ==Sales and legacy==

Ampere delivered the first units of the WS-1 in Japan in November 1985. Workspace Computer, Inc., of Torrance, California, secured the rights to resell the WS-1 in the United States, while Nissei, a subsidiary of Nissan, secured the rights to resell it in the United Kingdom. The WS-1 reportedly never shipped in the United States, according to Jalopnik, on account of the laptop failing to meet the FCC Class A RF emissions compliance. Due to its unique styling, use of APL, and ties to the Datsun 240Z, the WS-1 is now a collector's item. ==References==