Designer Builds a Retro Clamshell Terminal That Beats Severance's MDR Desks

The GRiD Compass, the magnesium clamshell that Bill Moggridge designed and NASA flew aboard Columbia in 1983 as the Shuttle Portable Onboard Computer, has a fictional descendant: the P1 Terminal, a CGI concept from designer Shaun Wellens that wraps Space Shuttle DNA in the cream-and-phosphor aesthetic of Severance's MDR desks.

Wellens built the concept for a made-up 1970s company called Push / Pull, and he gave it a full fake history. In his timeline, the P1 launched in 1972 for people living in underground communities called "pockets," where it handled mail, bulletin boards, and shopping. It sold badly. Its users adored it. It got a sequel. That's the life story of every cult-classic gadget ever made, and Wellens knows it.

What does the design actually look like?

The shell is a rounded off-white pod with a sage-gray handle module on top, shaped like the carrying grip on a vintage TV. That handle has a recessed slot and a tinted window that recall the iMac G3 and the 1999 clamshell iBook. The two halves join at a stacked metal hinge at the center — the one visibly mechanical part on an otherwise pebble-smooth body.

Inside the lid sits a dark, rounded-rectangle display with cyan-green text, mimicking an old phosphor CRT. A camera pokes through a tiny notch at the top center, which is a hilarious detail on a computer that supposedly shipped in 1972. Perforated speaker grilles flank the screen.

The bottom half is a dark oval tray holding a full keyboard, with a blue trackball parked dead center below the keys. That ball is the loudest color on the product, and it earns the spot. Trackballs have shown up in early terminals, arcade cabinets, and Logitech's TrackMan; Severance gave them another memorable role on the MDR desks. Center placement also makes sense for a shared machine — lefties and righties get equal access.

How would you use it?

A chunky, multi-jointed arm, borrowed visually from a robotics lab, supports the terminal. It lets the P1 swing out, tilt, and tuck away — useful movements for a shared machine in a cramped communal space. In one render, the cable drops from above, suggesting a ceiling- or wall-mounted setup like a dental lamp. Residents could walk up, pull it down, check mail, and push it back. That setup makes the P1 feel closer to a payphone or a library catalog terminal than a personal computer, and it might even explain the Push / Pull name, though Wellens hasn't confirmed that theory.

Is the fictional history plausible?

Surprisingly close to real events. In August 1973, the Community Memory Project installed a public bulletin board terminal in Leopold's Records in Berkeley, with later terminals appearing in libraries and laundromats around town. A decade later, France began distributing free Minitel terminals that let people shop, bank, and message each other from home; the service ran until 2012. The P1 mashes both precedents into one glossy pod.

Wellens calls the P1's text-only, numbered-menu interface a "lightning-fast graphical interface" anyway — and in his fictional timeline, it arrived a full year before the Xerox Alto, the pioneering 1973 GUI computer. He also admits to sneaking deliberate flaws into his fictional designs so the imaginary engineers can fix them in the next version.

He even mocked up a period magazine ad with a big serif headline over a violet product shot, convincing enough to make you want to mail away for one.

Will it ever get built?

Probably not, but the pitch writes itself. Wellens has form here: he previously designed the Kriket 3000, a pastel retro robot that would look at home wandering Severance's severed floor. Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle already delivered television's most covetable fake office tech, and the P1 looks like a terminal Lumon would install somewhere friendlier than the Break Room. If the show's crew wants strange hardware for the next season, the phone call is obvious.