EMRAD Ltd was started up by Dr Richard Chignell and John Stewart, to exploit ground probing radar technology in commercial applications i.e. detecting buried pipes and for searching for underground features.

The majority of funding for the first project came from a consortum of New York gas companies.

The photograph below demonstrates the 'maze' of pipes they face below the streets of Manhattan.

The corner of Wall St and William St. Looking south east Date unknown.

The company's office was initially at the Technology centre on the Surrey Research Park, Guildford.
This was where I designed and built the company's first Ground Probing Radar system. This included all the electronics and the writing of the operational software.

For a project involving the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, a device for the surveying of road cracking and tarmac deterioration was designed. Now leading a team, I designed and built a multi channel system. Using 4 transmitters and 4 receiver circuits, 16 streams of data were generated, all requiring processing.
At this time PC's, with the new generation of 486 processors, were no where near fast enough to be of any practical use, so a dedicated processor was used instead.

The company featured on the Austrailian TV science show 'BEYOND 2000'.

With the company growing, more staff were employed and Emrad moved to a factory unit in Godalming.
The company was now able to offer a full sub-surface survey facility.

It was used, successfully, on the notorious Fred West murder enquiry.

The single channel product was now progressing rapidly and was rebranded the 'Pipe Hawk'.

Having spent, by now, 11 years working with ground probing radar, I decided to take a complete change of career.

It was in December 1995, that I left Emrad Ltd to work in Television.