Al Middleditch was born in London in 1942 and won a state scholarship to Manchester University where he obtained a BSc(Tech) in Electrical Engineering and an MSc in Digital Systems.
On leaving Manchester he became a digital systems development engineer for the English Electric Company where he designed and built the prototype arithmetic unit for System 4 mainframe computers (an equivalent to the IBM 360). He subsequently moved to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in the U.S.A. to work on both hardware and software for computer process control of steel rolling mills and factory automation. During the late 60's he attended Carnegie Mellon University where he obtained an MS in Computing, Control and Communication Sciences and a PhD in Computer Control Engineering. He then returned to Westinghouse and designed the first computer numerical control system for machine tools in 1969. In 1972 Al became a research fellow at the University of Rochester where he was co-designer of the first set-theoretic (CSG) solid modelling system.
In 1973 he returned to the U.K. to become a reader in Computer Aided Engineering at the Polytechnic of Central London. After a short period back in the U.S. as a principal scientist at Tektronix Research Laboratories working on algorithms for graphics devices he joined Brunel University where he was director of the Centre for Geometric Modelling and Design.