John Ellenby (9 January 1941 – 17 August 2016) was a British businessman.
[1] He studied geography and economics at University College London, and first encountered mainframe computers for the first time in the early 1960s, when he spent a year at the London School of Economics.
[7] In 1979, he cofounded Grid Systems Corporation with colleagues from Xerox PARC;[5][2][4] the business started with $13 million of funding from Wall Street venture capitalists.
[2][5] The design for The Compass computer was allegedly based on the shape of Ellenby's briefcase.
[11][12] Ellenby also founded Geovector, a company based on applications of augmented reality.