
Many announcements are coming out of CES this year before the main week and one that caught my eye was from Lenovo and its Yoga AIO 7. While an All-In-One with a rotating display is already impressive enough, what truly caught my eye was the design of the internal rotation mechanism shown off in this video:
Yoga AIO 7: the world's first AIO 27" 4K IPS display w/ 99% Adobe RGB color gamut & DCI-P3 99% color space.
With its rotatable hinge, you can easily switch up your screen’s position from horizontal to vertical for optimal viewing.https://t.co/qeNFMZy0q6 | #LenovoCES #CES2021 pic.twitter.com/c6hPsd0rxG
— Lenovo (@Lenovo) January 7, 2021
If you pause the video and examine the tracks that handle what is likely a very smooth action, they don’t too much unlike those that are found in the classic IBM ThinkPad 701C TrackWrite or more famously known as “Butterfly” keyboard.
If the above images are compared to the TrackWrite mechanism, the systems look like they share a similar design philosophy in terms of how they function. Both used pins set into tracks cut into the surfaces to guide where they ride.
While I doubt the similarities are anything beyond coincidence, it is fun to imagine how designs from the past could be repurposed in modern hardware.