Designer and developer of the world's first transistorized computer, the Metrovick 950, Grimsdale was born in Australia, returned to England with his parents, and later studied electrical engineering at Manchester University, graduating in 1950.
In 1953, while still a postgraduate research student at Manchester University, he 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. He also worked on the Ferranti Mark I computer, a commercial development of the Manchester Mark 1 computer, and Grimsdale designed the 100-nanosecond read-only memory for the Atlas computer.
He remained at Manchester University until 1960, when he took up a post at Associated Electrical Industries as a research engineer. In 1967, he left AEI and joined 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 three-dimensional images.
