One of the minds behind the first commercially successful clamshell laptop dies at 75
John Ellenby may not have been the father of the modern clamshell laptop, but as the CEO of Grid Systems, the first company who successfully commercialized the clamshell laptop in 1982, Ellenby was an early influencer of a trend that would set the standard for how all laptop computers look and function today.
Ellenby passed away this month, leaving behind a 34-year legacy of devices that, without his vision, would have looked a lot different today.
The Compass computer was not only the first of its kind, it was also in huge demand by government agencies, and corporate environments. NASA missions would often employ Grid’s Compass computers, and the device was also a subtle, but relevant part of popular culture, with cameos in the 1983 TV show Riptide, the 1985 film “Perfect”, and the original 1986 “Aliens” movie.
The Compass was not the first laptop ever constructed, it was preceded by the Osborne 1, created in 1981. However the differences between the two were all but subtle. The Compass was an 11-pound laptop featuring an Intel 8086 CPU, a 320 x 240-pixel electroluminescent display, a 340Kb magnetic bubble memory, and a 1200 bit/s modem, enclosed in a case that could fit in a briefcase.
By comparison, the Osborne 1 weighed 24 pounds, and featured two full-size 5-1/4 inch floppy drives and a 5-inch monitor. It was cased in industrial white, with front-facing communication ports and a heavy-duty handle on the rear.
In a way, Grid was not unlike Apple, as the company built the Compass by taking inspiration from the best of the first Osborne computer, and by making it faster, slimmer, better looking, and easier to use, which resulted in a machine that, although was four times more expensive than the Osborne 1, it won industries over with a product that enabled organizations to embrace mobile computing for the first time ever, which paved the way for an explosive evolution of portable computers.
Among some notable owners of the Compass computer, 44th US President Ronald Reagan’s National Security chief John Poindexter was particularly fond of the device. James Opfer, the director of the White House Communication Agency during Reagan’s presidency, was quoted during an interview as saying that he was convinced that the Compass, often carried by military personnel during Reagan’s travels, was in fact the rumored “nuclear football”, the portable computing device which was allegedly capable of establishing a direct link to the Pentagon’s nuclear missile control, and which could be used to authorize ICBM and single-missile launches.
During his time working at Xerox, in the early 1970s, Ellenby worked on the development of the Alto II, a desktop PC which would later on inspire the Apple Lisa, the Macintosh, and provide the theoretical basis for the development of Microsoft Windows.
In a way, we could say that without Ellenby, the world would have never known the Apple MacBook, nor the Windows PC as we know it.
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