Unveiled in June 1984 as the BIG.APL and later released as the WS-1 in November 1985, the laptop was noted by journalists for its striking case design—rendered by Kumeo Tamura, one of the principal designers of the Datsun 240Z.
Ampere, Inc., a Japanese computer systems company founded by Takashi Kusanagi in the early 1980s, first announced the WS-1 in June 1984 under the prototype name BIG.APL.
[9] The company aimed WS-1 at users of APL, a programming language that uses graphic symbols to represent most functions and operators.
[1] Big.DOS also features a full-screen line editor, a word processor, a spreadsheet application, a modem utility, and a database program, all running in a windowing text-based user interface with multitasking capability.
[7]: 125 John J. Anderson, writing in Creative Computing, called the display an improvement over that included with the earlier Data General/One laptop: "[E]xtremely easy to read, even in less than optimal lighting conditions".
[9] The WS-1 reportedly never shipped in the United States, according to Jalopnik, on account of the laptop failing to meet the FCC Class A RF emissions compliance.