Andrew Kay, an inventor who pioneered the use of compact computers in the 1980s with Kaypro II, died Aug. 28 at an assisted living home in Vista, Calif. He was 95.

His son, David Kay, confirmed the death. The cause was not disclosed.

The Kaypro II weighed in at a mere 26 pounds, which is elephantine by today’s standards but was a technological breakthrough at the time. It was a favorite of early computer aficionados and briefly made Mr. Kay a high-tech titan. By 1990, he had filed for bankruptcy protection.

Mr. Kay was a charismatic inventor who scoffed at traditional management techniques and gave his factory workers and sales staff an unusual degree of freedom. He grew up speaking an Eastern European dialect called Lemko, believed in the power of an improved vocabulary and always encouraged employees to build their word skills.

Inspired by the human potential movement of the 1960s, he took frequent trips to the Esalen retreat center in Northern California and tried to apply some of the movement’s precepts at work.

Kaypro founder Andrew Kay, left, and his son David in 1984. (Los Angeles Times)

At his company’s facility in Solana Beach, Calif., he junked the time clocks. Salespeople were not forced to produce detailed expense reports but were trusted to spend their monthly expense allowances wisely.

Assembly-line workers were paid as much as 25 percent more than minimum wage. After Mr. Kay noticed that the workers who put the final touches on a product at the end of the line seemed a lot happier than the ones at the start, he developed self-governing teams of six to nine employees who did it all.

“We regard management as basically an affair of teaching and training, not one of directing and controlling,” he told an interviewer. “We control the process, not the people.”

While the team idea is commonplace now, it was so innovative at the time that the renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow spent a summer in Mr. Kay’s plant, which he chronicled in his 1965 book, “Eupsychian Management.” “Eupsychian” was a Maslow coinage meaning human-centered.

The company, then called Non-Linear Systems, produced digital voltmeters that Mr. Kay invented in 1953. They were said to be the first electronic test instruments to use a digital display instead of the less precise readings afforded by a needle on a dial.

In the 1970s, Non-Linear was battered by competition from large companies and cuts in the aerospace industry. Drawn to the burgeoning personal computer industry, Mr. Kay, with his son David, designed the all-in-one Kaypro, a compact unit meant to compete with the standard set-up of separate devices connected by a tangle of cables.

Among the Kaypro’s first users was a young Pizza Hut marketing executive who signed on to an early Internet service from his apartment in Wichita.

1 of 114 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Notable deaths of 2014 View Photos A look at those who have died this year. Caption A look at those who have died this year. Edward Herrmann

READ: Edward Herrmann dies at 71. Edward Herrmann, the famed character actor best known in recent years for his starring role in “Gilmore Girls,” died at age 71. Herrmann, who got his Hollywood start in movies like “The Paper Chase” (1973) and was known for other roles in “The Lost Boys” and “Overboard” in 1987, did extensive work in movies, television and on Broadway. Evan Agostini/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

“I remember it being frustrating,” Steve Case told Time magazine in 1997, “but there was something magical about the notion of sitting in Wichita and talking to people from all over the world.”

Case went on to found AOL.

John Francis Kopischiansky was born Jan. 22, 1919, in Akron, Ohio, and grew up in Clifton, N.J. His parents emigrated from a region in what is now Poland. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940 and worked for a defense company during World War II.

He moved to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1949 and changed his name to Andrew Kay. He started Non-Linear in 1952.

After the company morphed into Kaypro, it underwent a tremendous growth surge, with revenue peaking at $125 million in 1983.

Kaypro outlasted some of its competitors, but it failed after Kay refused to ship manufacturing overseas, said David Kay, who was head of marketing before leaving the company in 1988.

Andrew Kay’s father, Fyodor Kopischiansky, worked for him as a maintenance supervisor until he was 98, when the Kaypro plant closed.

Mr. Kay continued in the computer business well into his 80s, supervising a few employees who built custom desktops for businesses in San Diego.

Mary Marble Kay, his wife of 56 years, died in 1996.

Survivors include four children; 14 grandchildren; and 26 great-grandchildren.