The Grid Compass, released in 1982, was arguably the world's first full-fledged laptop, whose only glaring deficiency to modern eyes is the small display, 320x240 with physical size to match, something that would have significantly restricted its usefulness in a world of desktops with 80-column text. (Compare to the otherwise similar Toshiba T3100, four years later.)
Obviously a larger display would have cost more, but intuitively, the benefit would have been easily worth the cost. Where does intuition go wrong? What was the obstacle with a larger display that was so severe that it led to the designers settling for 320x240?