77312-37AN ENGINEER and hoarder is £5,000 richer after finding a rare magazine under his floorboards.

Computer chip manufacter Intel, which has its European headquarters in Swindon, desperately wanted a copy of the April 1965 edition of Electronics magazine to form part of a new collection at the firm's museum in California.

The magazine contained an article by Intel founder Gordon Moore, who predicted the huge increase in transistors that could be squeezed onto a silicon computer chip.

The company began a worldwide search and offered anyone who had a copy of the magazine a $10,000 (£5,200) reward.

David Clark, 57, was searching through his home in Earlswood, Surrey, when he found an under-floor trapdoor. It contained a pristine copy of the magazine.

Mr Clark found out about the search for the magazine last month while surfing through technology websites on the internet. When he discovered he had a copy, his feet barely touched the ground.

On Friday he delivered the magazine to the Intel offices in Old Town to the delight of Intel staff.

Mr Clark said: "I managed to get the magazine from my employers about 30 years ago. At the time they had a technical library and they were throwing a whole load of magazines away.

"But I thought it would be worth keeping a few and so I grabbed a few of them.

"When I spotted the request, I decided to take a day off looking for it. I eventually found them under a trapdoor in the living room with lots of other editions of the magazine.

"I had never even read the magazine, but since all the interest I've been doing my research and Moore was right. At the time there were computer chips with hundreds of thousands of transistors and the numbers have gone up and up ever since."

Mr Clark said he would probably use the reward money to pay for his daughter's wedding.

Nick Knupffer of Intel said: "We were amazed at the quick response to the request.

"Unfortunately Mr Moore lent out his copy of the magazine a few years ago to a friend and never got it back so having this magazine in our museum in Santa Clara means a lot to us.

"The article is part of the company's history so we are very happy to have a copy."

The magazine was expected to stay in Swindon for a few days and should be transported to the firm's public museum this week under close guard.

Anthony Osborne