in electronics from Portsmouth Polytechnic and joined Marconi, where he worked on high-powered projects, such as satellite technology.

Then in the mid-1970s he moved to work for Smiths Aviation, where he designed hardware to implement computer control systems for jet engines.

There he found himself using Zilog Z80 and Intel 8088 machine code language for small applications of a classified nature for the Ministry of Defence.

The Bristol factory was closed in 1981 but by then Malcolm had received a ZX81 from his wife, Linda, for his thirty-seventh birthday in April 1981.

Malcolm developed 3D Monster Maze to test what the computer was capable of, and completed it by November.