Grid Systems Corporation


GRiD Systems Corporation was founded in January 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
GRiD developed and released several pioneering ideas:
In 1988, Tandy Corporation purchased GRiD. AST Computer acquired the company, and was itself later acquired by Samsung.
Edens co-founded Waveform Corp and in 2003 joined the board of F5 Networks Inc.
John Ellenby went on to co-found the companies Agilis and Augmented Reality pioneer GeoVector.