Mannerisms

The Next Big Thing, in 1980, was the microcomputer, which is what everyone called PCs before they were called PCs.

In the US, the Altair microcomputer, and the first Apple microcomputers had been launched.

"In this country there was something called CPU in Cambridge which was Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry”, recalls Potter, “and there was Sinclair Research which came up with the Z80 microcomputer in 1980."

"Then I saw what Hermann Hauser was doing - he produced something called the Acorn Atom - and I first began to examine how they were selling them", remembers Potter, "I rang them up and said: ' I need to come and see you'. So I went and chatted to Clive Sinclair and Hermann Hauser. What I was doing was searching for opportunities."

Potter then looked at the software being produced for these microcomputers and found "a whole cottage industry going on." One example was a BA employee who'd written a chess playing programme to run on a Z80.

"He was advertising in funny, dirty little Xerox-ed magazines saying 'Hey, if you've got this kind of computer - a Z80-based machine - and if you put in a few bit's here, and a few bytes there, you can play chess on your machine'. Wow! It was really interesting stuff," remembers Potter.

"So I approached some of these people and said: 'If I make a deal with you - a non-exclusive deal so you can carry on selling your stuff yourself - and I repackage your product and sell it, I think I can get it distributed much more widely than you realise. And I will give you a 12 percent royalty".

So Psion kicked off as a software publisher with a whole range of products from the cottage industry developers of computer games to utility products like printer drivers and databases