Francis Wallinger

From Francis's comments in his LinkedIn Profile

Francis Wallinger

I first heard of Francis when I was compiling my list of Memotech games authors. I had him listed as the author of "Theseus and the Labyrinth", published by Tricom Software, but had not realised that he was also the founder and managing director of Tricom.

When I revisited the Memotech entry in the Exhibitor's Guide for the Earls Court Computer Fair in 1983, I saw that Francis was on the Memotech stand at the ECCF and realised that Francis played a much bigger part at Memotech than writing a game or two!

 I found much more information on Francis on him on his LinkedIn Profile.

His Memotech entries are reproduced in full here and his long and varied career after Memotech are summarised below them.

R&D Engineer : Memotech 1983 - May 1985

Starting on the shop floor assembling circuit boards, my interest in all things technological soon drove me to exploit the excellent development opportunities provided. Memotech designed and built the leading expansion packs for the Sinclair ZX81, and went on to design and build the MTX range of home computers

I learned: - Assembler programming, eventually contributing to BIOS and O/S development. - Hardware engineering up to the level of designing a new floppy disk controller which Memotech successful marketed. - Marketing & Sales support, working on trade shows around the world as the lead technical support

Founder & Managing Director : Wallinger TriCom Ltd  1985 - 1986

I founded this software, hardware and services provider to take advantage of the booming home computer market being served by Memotech.

I designed a printer spooler (hardware and software) product for Memotech, however they went out of business before bringing it to market. The lack of games available For the Memotech MTX range soon pushed the business into primarily software publishing. We successfully commissioned 5 games and wrote one in-house, including frogger and pac-man. Marketing was through Direct Mail (using the prototype printer spooler), and achieved a 40% response rate on a 4,000 mailing.

Francis's career path, summarised from his LinkedIn Profile, is below :

Senior Program Manager Busy Rooms Limited, Denmark Oct 2020 - Present ·

Co-Founder Vacation Soup, Denmark Jun 2017 - Sep 2020

Caregiving Career Break Oct 2016 - Aug 2020

Non-Exec Director Alchemetrics,UK Jun 2017 - Dec 2019

Chairman Alchemetrics,UK Jul 2011 - Jun 2017

Founder & Managing Director Alchemetrics, UKApr 1996 - Jul 2011

Chief Technology Officer Award 8, Shanghai · May 2010 - Sep 2012

Non-Exec Director Datalytics, UK Oct 2003 - Sep 2009

Founder & Director Transactis, UK 2005 - 2008

Development Director SDM Jan 1990 - Apr 1996 

Marketing Manager Office Systems, Bahamas 1988 - Nov 1989

Programmer ISC Systems, UK 1986 - 1988 

Founder & Managing Director Wallinger TriCom Ltd, UK 1985 - 1986

R&D Engineer Memotech, UK  1983 - May 1985