Richard Grimsdale, Computer Pioneer, Is Dead at 76
NY Times
Richard L. Grimsdale, an electrical engineer who colleagues said built the first transistorized computer, died Dec. 6 at his home in Brighton, England. He was 76.
The cause was a heart infection, according to his wife, Shirley Roberts Grimsdale.
The transistor, which was invented in 1948 by researchers at Bell Laboratories was in its infancy when Mr. Grimsdale, who had received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Manchester University, began experimenting with the tiny switches, which were then built by hand.
He worked at the university, where he would later earn a Ph.D., as a research student and had heard about early tube-based computers. He did not have direct experience with the first machines until he was sent to Cambridge to take a summer school course in programming an early machine known as the EDSAC 1.
He returned to Manchester and was asked to write test programs by a professor. Frequently, he recalled in a memoir, he found errors, both in his programs and in the underlying logic of the early computers he was experimenting with.
He obtained samples of transistors in 1953 and began experimenting. These were difficult devices because of their spotty quality, and his wife said that he would occasionally complain about the value of systems that were made “during teatime.”
He was able to acquire a magnetic drum for storing data that had been made by Ferranti, an early computer maker. He ran the first program on his experimental computer in November 1953. The machine comprised 92 transistors. He noted that the transistor machine was “comparatively small,” and that he was able to build it on a post office rack, in contrast to the tube-based Mark I machine, which occupied a large room.
Later two engineers from Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical collaborated with Mr. Grimsdale on what is thought to have been the first commercial transistor computer, known as the MV950. A later version, the 1010, was one of the first machines to be used for what was to become data processing.
