The IBM 5100 Portable Computer is one of the first portable computers, announced by IBM's General Systems Division on September 9, 1975, six years before the IBM Personal Computer, and eight years before the first successful IBM compatible portable computer, the Compaq Portable. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP that was developed at the IBM Los Gatos Laboratory and Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. Although it was marketed as a portable computer, it still needed to be plugged into an electric socket.