David Potter, founder of Psion, tells a surreal yarn describing the sudden demise of the UK personal computer industry.
In the early 1980s, the UK had a thriving personal computer industry, then usually called microcomputer industry, with a raft of independent manufacturers selling in-house designed, proprietary machines under brand names such as Sinclair, Acorn, Oric and Dragon.
In 1982, Sir Clive Sinclair's Spectrum computer was the biggest-selling computer in the US.
None of the UK people could have known, no one knew, the effect which the IBM PC, launched in 1981, was going to have on standardisation of the personal computer industry around the IBM architecture which would annihilate proprietary microcomputers.
"In previous years, microcomputer makers had been caught out by the scale of the demand and had not built up enough stock, so, for Christmas 1984, they ordered masses of stock," recounts Potter.
"I remember Nigel Searle, who was managing director for Clive Sinclair, saying to me: 'Whatever happens we are not going to run short of stock this year'. He was right. He was absolutely right".
"I remember going to a party at Clive Sinclair's house in Cambridge - The Stone House - round about 20th December 1984", recalls Potter, "it was a wonderful party, everybody in the industry was there, there were lights strung up all around, and there was grand food, and it was meant to be a celebration of this great success. And it was a great party.
"But there was an atmosphere about that party, where everybody, well not everybody, but certain people, knew their companies were effectively bankrupt. Some didn't even realize that was the case. Acorn had just been quoted on the stock market and it was bankrupt in January or February."
Sinclair didn't last much longer. He sold his computer business to Sir Alan Sugar after a creditors' meeting which took place over Easter 1985.
Swamped by massive inventories and collapsed demand, the UK personal computer industry sank beneath the waves.
Oric and Dragon followed over the next eighteen months and the brief flowering of the British PC industry was over.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
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