OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world

Interesting story I always think of related to the OLPC. We had someone from the project give a presentation to our local LUG, brought in by the excellent Jonathan Corbet of LWN.

The early OLPC prototypes had a hand crank for power. Everyone loved that idea, internally at the OLPC project and in the public. But, when they were trying to build the final design, the materials scientists said the stresses involved in that crank would cause longevity problems. "We can totally solve this, we just need to make the frame out of titanium." "Uh... Thanks guys, but this is supposed to be a $100 laptop."

I heard that there was an even more evocative death behind the hand crank idea: Kofi Annan was demoing the prototype laptop with attached hand crank in public, and the crank broke apart from the laptop while he was turning it.

I worked at OLPC, and I thought this aspect ultimately ended up fine: we quickly moved to having a separate pullcord charger instead. The pullcord didn't put any stress on the laptop, and you generated power with actual large muscle groups along your body, rather than just rotating your wrist, so it was massively more efficient. But everyone kept mentioning the crank, for sure.