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My father worked in a scientific lab where he designed and built glass instruments. He was regarded as brilliant at his job and once constructed a human brain in glass just to show off his skills.

I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a threshing rig steam engine and I loved the machinery.

Most of my instruments are handmade.

I had been building electronic musical instruments since I was a kid.

I also became interested in chemistry and gradually accumulated enough test tubes and other glassware to do chemical experiments, using small quantities of chemicals purchased from a pharmacy supply house.

Back in the '40s and early '50s, building simple electronic projects was a popular hobby of many people. Back then, you could buy, you know, a few parts and - with tubes and build something on your kitchen table, and it would actually work.

I joined the staff of EMI in Middlesex in 1951, where I worked for a while on radar and guided weapons and later ran a small design laboratory. During this time, I became particularly interested in computers, which were then in their infancy. It was interesting, pioneering work at that time: drums and tape decks had to be designed from scratch.

I've gone down several paths. I started school as an engineer, but underneath it all, I knew I wanted to use instruments, not build them.

As an engineer, I tended to maintain my own equipment along with developing the processes for it.

I was brought up to reuse things.