The design of the Liberator was instigated in 1983 by the UK Government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA).
The CCTA initially contacted Dragon Data to develop the product, but the company went into administration shortly afterwards, and the engineering team were taken on by Thorn EMI to continue the project in 1984.
Derek Williams headed up the business side of the endeavour, working closely with the CCTA and Thorn EMI senior management.
The Liberator entered limited production in early 1985 and was officially launched in September of that year, with PR from Aspect Public Relations.
The Liberator was based on a Zilog Z80A microprocessor and a Gate array implementing the screen controller, keyboard interface and other I/O logic.