Richard Grimsdale

Richard Lawrence Grimsdale, (September 18, 1929 – December 6, 2005) was a British electrical engineer and computer pioneer, who helped to design the world's first transistorized computer.

Early life

Richard Grimsdale was born in Australia, in 1929. His father was an English engineer who was working on a project for the Metropolitan Vickers company. Grimsdale returned to England with his parents and later studied electrical engineering at Manchester University, graduating in 1950.

Career

In 1953, whilst still a post graduate research student at Manchester University, Grimsdale achieved one of the first major landmarks in his career, with his design and development work on the Metrovick 950, the world's first computer made from transistors rather than valves or electromechanical devices. The computer used early point contact transistors which were the first generation of transistors, however later developments of the machine used more advanced junction transistors which offered better performance.

Grimsdale also worked on the Ferranti Mark I computer, a commercial development of the Manchester Mark I computer. He also designed the 100-nanosecond read-only memory for the Atlas computer.

Grimsdale remained at Manchester University until 1960, when he took up a post at Associated Electrical Industries as a research engineer.

In 1967, Grimsdale left AEI and joined the Sussex University's electrical engineering faculty as a lecturer. His research at Sussex University included work on computer graphics, computer networking systems and VLSI accelerator chips for generating 3 dimensional images.

References

*Encyclopædia Britannica article about Richard Grimsdale
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/business/29grimsdale.html?ei=5090&en=c56db8cc8f824e84&ex=1293512400&pagewanted=print New York Times obituary, published December 29, 2005]
* [http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?spkid=0&ssid=1090016107 Computer History Museum]