Dave trained as a radio officer in the Navy straight out of school, and remained in the service until 1960. His first job was at Mullards in Surrey, who made magnetic cores for computer memory. Mullards sent him for training testing memory cores and he also went on a radar course, which taught him about pulse networks. Dave moved to Fylingdales where he was trained on the IBM 790 and worked on the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System on the Whitby Moors.
DEC advertised for magnetic memory tester engineers, and he applied and was interviewed by Geoff Shingles and Ken Senior in DEC’s first office above a furniture shop in Reading. He was sent to Massachusetts for training on the PDP-8 as DEC moved away from memory testers, and worked as a support engineer across Europe being promoted to senior support engineer.
After 11 years in this role, Dave went into management and became field service branch manager for London. When the DEC factory in Ayr, Scotland opened in 1975 he became manager of the plant, his responsibility later including plants in France and Germany too.