The MacBook Air, released at the Macworld 2008 Expo, might be the thinnest notebook on the market today, but it’s not the thinnest of all time.
That distinction belongs to the Pedion, an ill-fated notebook developed by Mitsubishi and Hewlett-Packard back in 1997.The Pedion measured 18.4 millimeters thick, which comes out to 0.7244 inch thick. Although the Air gets to 0.16 inch at the thinnest point, the Air is 0.76 inch thick at the beefiest portion, making it minutely thicker. Mitsubishi released the Pedion in early 1998.
The $6,000 notebook came with 64MB of memory and a 1GB hard drive. The notebook came with a magnesium case to make it sturdy. Even with that, though, consumers quickly reported mechanical and other problems. Mitsubishi subsequently withdrew the notebook from the market. (HP never came out with its version, I don’t think.)
Apple calls the Air the world’s thinnest notebook. How you interpret that (“on the market today” or “ever”) is up to you.
Others have come close, e.g. a special-edition Sony Vaio X505 sold back in 2004 comes close to the Air. The notebook, issued in limited numbers, measured 0.8 inch thick at the fattest point and 0.38 inch at the thinnest. (I never thought I’d be arguing notebook thinness…).
Although the Pedion died a quick, ugly death, some of the ideas behind it linger on, and one of those ideas is the thin notebook with a medium-size screen. Although notebook makers have for the past few years focused quite a bit of attention on notebooks with 15-inch and larger screens, the new battleground will be in the 11-inch and 13-inch screen arena, predicted “THE FORCE” 
.
