Given the benefit of the worst education the country can provide in the 'B' stream at a secondary modern. Leaving school a day before my fifteenth birthday having honed my business skills selling sweet chesnuts and conker trees at school.

Worked as a junior operative trainee in Renishaw Ironworks (Thanks John Meakin for rescuing me and getting me into the 'labs' and teaching me bucket chemistry). Then for a refractory brick company (Thanks Stafford Scholes for introducing me to X-Rays).

 

With a major breakthrough at age 19 to be a research assistant at The Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge (Eternal thanks to Mick Brown and Archie Howie). Where initially I developed crystal growing furnace controllers and then instrumentation for the worlds first STEM, the HB5. In my spare time starting up a scrap electronics business then designing, manufacturing and selling with Jake (Pete) Chapman the first multichannel disco sound operated flashing light system.
Set up a sole trader, soft start business, in 1970 manufacturing instruments such as motor controllers, Digimeters, Scandrives, IMAS, and backscattered electron detectors created out of work at Cavendish (Thanks Terry Brown and Metal Crystals - first customer).

Forming a partnership with Pat Heslop-Harrison and Nick Toop in 1983 to develop a de-icing pump controller (from a contact I made whilst walking Hadrians wall) which then led onto CMM components and finally to the current product range see Cortex Controllers website. 

 

Developed the Cortex range of stepper motor driven rotators to aid optical inspection of jet engines, now used by all major airlines and military airforces globally. Negotiating with Olympus  to take worldwide distribution rights.

 

Sold my share of Cortex Controllers on July 1 2004 to Nick Toop. Now concentrating on the  latest Web2 technologies eg RSS feeds, Blogging, tagging etc.

 

Currently also helping to mentor other start ups in Cambridge UK.

 

First surfed the net in 1994 at the Cyberia cafe in London and in 1995 had my first dial up connection with Pipex. In 2002 I started my blog using Dave Winer's Radio software moving to Blogger in 2003. Organised the first Our Social World conference on September 9th 2005  in Cambridge, UK. Using Wordpress for the first time.