I asked a friend that works for them, and he doesn’t know. I’m guessing the letters stand for something, but I don’t know what for. Is it a fancy way of saying “Compact”?
It means nothing. It is just a play off “compact” as you guessed. Compaq’s first computer products were portable computers, if you can imagine anything weighing about 40 pounds and the size of a large suitcase being described as compact. But in those days, that was a small portable computer.
I can picture taking a 40lb. laptop on a plane. Set that thing on your tray and the chair in front of you snaps off. Ahhh, finally some leg room, not that you could feel them with a “laptop” cutting of the blood flow.
They weren’t forty pounds. They were only thirty-two pounds. And sized to, theoretically, fit UNDER your seat, completely eliminating all footroom for the person behind you. In those less-hurried days people napped on planes.
I know that Compaq used to mean “proprietary” when it came to upgrades, at least.
That old 40-pound (or 32-pound or whatever) original Compaq computer couldn’t be used on an airplane anyway, because it required to be plugged into the wall. It was portable in that you could take it home with you over the weekend and do your work there. I recall the first time I saw one, a friend had done exactly that. It was suitcase-sized, and had a small screen with orange letters. I don’t think PC’s yet commonly had hard disks, so you had to boot it from a floppy.
This site wants us to believe that:
There are some who would take umbrage with that rather short, but potentially contradictory statement. (assume and insert your choice of suitable graphic here)
In the late 1970’s, while upgrading my education a skosh, I saw my first portable “computer?” being plugged in as we prepared to take a rather rigorous final exam. I watched the fellow for a while, and asked some questions. He had what appeared to be all the likely to be needed formulae stored onboard, and the ability to plug in the needed variables to get the desired results. The professor came over and chatted with the student for quite some time before beginning the four hour timed exam. I contend that this was much more than a small suitcase sized calculator, but do not remember any of the significant specifics.
Everyone else in the small auditorium was burning the wood on their slide rules while searching for accurate results. Guess who finished first.
The professor was so enthralled with the magic box that none of our protests registered.
A small but important portion of my life changed on that day.
I used to have one of those old suitcase Compaqs - 2 floppy drives, 6" screen, BASIC, DOS 1.0 (later 2.0, oolala), Lotus, Fortran, a few other primitive applications. I wrote my first program on that thing, a choose-your-own-adventure text game. I also remember spending most of a winter hinched over it, trying to beat “The Bard’s Tale”. My Compaq had the green display, not the amber (aka “orange”) which was intended to ameliorate eye strain and also looked really cool.
Sometimes I miss that little guy - “bee-beep!!” (sniffle)
And yes, as far as I ever heard it’s a high-tech, foo-foo-futuristic way of saying “compact”. (It has the added benefit of being the way most Texans pronounce “compact”, i.e. “I got me a compaq car”.)
This reminds me of a story. I was taking a trig final in 1990. One of the older students who never came to class, except on test day, walked in late. He sat at his desk and pulled out a silde rule. The professor watched him do the first problem then took his test away, and in front of the class wrote a big A on it. The student then left.
As bawdysurfer pointed out, the official story from Compaq is that it’s for Compatibility and Quality. I worked there for a while, and that was the internal story too.
It would seem to be corroborated by the fact that the name is in all caps everywhere, as acronyms often are.
When the first business PCs came out, I worked for a bank that used IBM equipment almost exclusively, and was very cautious about other computer companies. So it was a real breakthrough when they finally said we could buy COMPAQ PCs in addition to true-blue IBMs.
By the way, a story I heard at the time was that COMPAQ sales people, in order to conclusively prove the quality of their PCs, would set one up on a desk, and while it was still running, push it onto the floor, then reconnect everything to show it was undamaged.