Grid Systems Corporation

A woman using a GridCase 3 to access the PDQ cancer database in 1987

GRiD Systems Corporation was founded in January 1979 by John Ellenby,[1] who left his job at Xerox Parc and joined Glenn Edens, Dave Paulsen and Bill Moggridge to form one of Silicon Valley's first stealth companies. The company went public in March 1981. It was located at 47211 Lakeview Boulevard, Fremont, California 94537.

The "GRiD" name with the unusual lowercase "i" in the middle was the result of discussion between John Ellenby, Glenn Edens and John Ellenby's wife, Gillian Ellenby, who pushed for the final choice. The lowercase "i" was a note of thanks to Intel for helping in the early days[2]

GRiD developed and released several pioneering ideas:[2]

In 1988, Tandy Corporation purchased GRiD. AST Computer acquired the company, which then was acquired by Samsung.[8]

Edens co-founded Waveform Corp and in 2003 joined the board of F5 Networks Inc.[9]

John Ellenby went on to co-found the companies Agilis and Augmented Reality pioneer GeoVector.

References

  1. John Ellenby Biography Archived 2010-11-28 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. 1 2 Email from Glenn Edens to Karen Tucker @ ComputerHistory.org
  3. PERSONAL COMPUTERS; THE PORTABLES COME MARCHING IN, appeared in The New York Times, Published: July 6, 1982
  4. USPTO-Portable Computer
  5. The BYTE Awards: GRiD System's GRiDPad, BYTE Magazine, Vol 15. No 1, 1990-01-12, p. 285
  6. Laptops in space
  7. http://oldcomputers.net/grid1101.html access 2010 1 9
  8. Tandy to Buy Grid Systems appeared in The New York Times, Published: Thursday, March 17, 1988
  9. Business Wire 2003 Aug 13, access 2010 1 9
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