NEW YORK: Bill Moggridge, a British industrial designer who came up with an early portable computer with the flip-open shape that is common today, has died. He was 69.

The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum said Moggridge, its director since 2010, died on Saturday from cancer. Moggridge is credited with the design of the Grid Compass, a computer that had a keyboard and yellow-on-black display that sold for $8,150 when it was released in 1982. It was encased in magnesium and seen as rugged, and was used by the US military. The computer made its way into outer space aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1985.

Although there were many portable computers being developed around that time, Grid Systems Corp. won the patent for the clamshell design with the foldable screen hinged toward the back of the machine, said Alex Bochannek, a curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.—AP