The Sun Ray 1 was the first in a series of thin client terminals developed by Sun Microsystems. Development began in 1997 under the codename NeWT (NetWorkTerminal). The terminal was designed to be low-power and stateless - user's applications ran on a server and only display/input were handled locally. An integrated smart card reader could be used to authenticate users and, properly configured, allowed a user to remove their smart card (logging them off the thin client) and insert it into any other Sun Ray immediately picking up their session where they left off.

Early model Sun Rays feature a video-in connector originally intended for video conferencing, but this was dropped in later models.

Our Sun Ray was kindly donated by Paul Shore and has a serial number of HD110010851.

Manufacturer: Sun Microsystems
Date: 1999

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH34213. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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