 I came from a small town in the Swan's Valley. I did an engineering apprenticeship. I was determined I was going to go into the career in the aircraft industry. I applied for a job in what is now Rolls-Royce, so it was about 33 when I was Deputy Chief Designer and that was the time when we started Renaissance. Dave and I met in a library in Rolls-Royce and he described a product that he'd invented. I thought well, here's a person who's obviously bright, obviously got the energy to and wants to do something so I thought this is the man I have to try and convince. He showed it to me on the shop floor and both of us decided that this is a product that we could sell. David's strength is that he's a great innovator as well as a designer. Well John's strength is always commercial knows. He has a great skill of organising things so they can get made. Renaissance started in March 1973 and was based in my home. The garage was the machine shop, dining room, the office and my fourth bedroom assembly. So we carried on for three years and then subsequently moved to Woodland Reg in 1976. The areas of science which we are active in is metrology which is the science of measurement. The first product came about was purely by accident I think. In my role at Rolls-Royce as Deputy Chief Designer I was asked to solve a problem that was occurred on the shop floor and they had a corded measuring machine trying to measure an instrumentation pipe of the Concorde engine. The machine they had had a solid probe on the end so when you actually pushed it against it to contact it to see where to measure it it pushed it out of the way and of course they couldn't get sensible readings. The way to get accuracy out of the probe was to design a probe that when it touches the object at the instant of touch it would freeze the coordinates measurements and that was achieved by using electrical contacts through a series of contact points within it so that when you touched it one of them was removed and you processed the signal. We were going to be selling to big companies who had absolutely failed to solve the problem of manufacturing a sensor capable of being used on their machines. So we had no problem whatsoever in introducing the product to these major companies in America, Japan and indeed Italy and the UK. Research and development is absolutely crucial to ensure if you have strong patents you can charge what the product is worth rather than competing with another company which drives the price down. This reward really is for the company and that's what makes me really proud. It puts the company in the spotlight. I think people love working here. They come in the morning, they pass the lake, see the ducks and swans and I think it gives them a good feeling.