Grid Systems. Grid Systems Corporation (stylized as GRiD) was an early portable computer manufacturer, based in the United States and oriented for the production of rugged and semi-rugged machines. Currently, the Grid computer brand still exists as Grid Defence Systems Ltd. in the United Kingdom.

History

Early history 
Grid Systems Corporation was founded in late 1979 by John Ellenby, 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.

Sale of company and US division 

In 1988, Tandy Corporation purchased the Grid company. AST Computer acquired the US wing of company, and was itself later acquired by Samsung.

Grid still produced the GRiDCASE laptops, and the first GridPad tablet also was released in 1989; Also a few rebranded models of another manufacturers were released, include Tandy/Victor Technologies Grid 386 (Compaq SLT clone), GRiDPad SL 2050 (Samsung PenMaster clone) and AST GRiDPad 2390 (Casio Zoomer/ Tandy Z-PDA clone). 

Edens co-founded Waveform Corp and in 2003 joined the board of F5, and John Ellenby went on to co-found the companies Agilis and augmented reality pioneer GeoVector.

GRiD Defence Systems 
Grid Defence Systems formed in London, England by former employees during a management buyout of the former GRiD Computer Systems UK Ltd. in 1993.

The UK Grid company starts with a simply "GRiD 1###"-branded rugged laptop line, and in 1995 reintroduced the GRiDCASE line.

Innovations
Grid developed and released several pioneering ideas:

 The Grid Compass 1100, the first clamshell laptop computer
 Patented the "clamshell" laptop design
 First portable to use non-volatile bubble-memory
 Grid-OS was a multi-tasking Text-based user interface (or TUI) and operating system
 First use of electro-luminescent displays in a portable
 First use of magnesium for the case
 First use of the Intel 8086 and 8087 floating-point co-processor in a commercial product
 Pioneered the concept of a "bus" for connecting peripherals (using GPIB)
 First computer that included a fully functional telephone and telephone handset
 The first commercially successful tablet-type portable computer was the GridPad, released in September 1989. Its operating system was based on MS-DOS.
 A GRiD Compass 1101 was the first laptop in space. Required special modification to add a fan to pull air through the case. Subsequently a GRiD 1530 flew on STS-29 in March 1989.
OldComputers.net called the 1982 GRiD Compass 1101 the "grand-daddy of all present-day laptop computers". It had 256k RAM, an 8086, 320x240 screen, and 384k of internal 'bubble memory' that held data with power off.

Notable computers
 Grid Compass
 GridCase
 GridPad

References

External links

 GRiD history 1979–2020 (on the website of GRiD Defence Systems, UK)
 Pioneering the Laptop – The GRiD Compass
 Annotated bibliography of references to handwriting recognition and tablet and touch computers
 Notes on the History of Pen-based Computing (YouTube)
 1000BiT in english and Italian

Computer companies established in 1979
Computer companies established in 1993
Computer companies disestablished in 1988
Computer companies disestablished in 1993
Corporate spin-offs
1979 establishments in California
1988 disestablishments in California
1993 establishments in the United Kingdom
Defunct computer companies based in California
Defunct computer companies of the United Kingdom
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Defunct computer hardware companies