John Ellenby dies

We have lost one of the most influential leaders of the PC Industry. John Ellenby was the CEO of Grid Systems. He died at the age of 75, but the reason of why he died is not determined yet. His company made the first successful clamshell laptop called the Compass. It was made in 1982 was very thick and heavy, but with a tiny screen. The Compass was very expensive and you could buy it for $8,150. The price made that the computer that the computer was popular for companies, the government and rich people.

Before Ellenby became the CEO of Grid Systems he worked at Xerox´s Palo Alto Research Center. He developed the Alto and made the sequel Alto II, which was much more commercially viable. What he didn’t know what that the Alto later would be the template for the Mac desktops. He also found Agilis, an early tablet company, and got the ball rolling on both augmented reality and navigation, with some help from GeoVector.

When Ellenby started to create laptops they weren’t a big hit and it should be over 10 years until Apple's PowerBook and IBM's ThinkPad got famous. So even if John´s companies wasn’t super famous he was a very important person in the PC world. He was very forward thinking and an ambitious person. And we will definitely miss John Ellenby!

Via: | Engadget |

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Source: | New York Times |

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Image Credit | Cnet |