Gerald began his working life as a student radiographer, but started to look for a new job and attended an aptitude test run by the Control Data Institute (CDI) – a government funded initiative. He passed, and after two interviews did an intensive course in computer operating called TOPS, covering IBM and ICL mainframes.
Gerald went straight from this course into working with Ferranti computer systems in Cwmbran as a computer operator on military grade systems, learning programming in his spare time. For his next job, Gerald moved to the south coast of the UK to work at Plessey Defence Systems as a software engineer. Plessey already had DEC VAX systems at this point. During his work as a contractor, Gerald worked with DEC systems and was a part of the Digital Equipment Company User Group (DECUS).