Blogging about #Micromen Sinclair, Acorn and a British future never realised?
Micromen follows the fortunes of two early pioneers of the British Computer market. A slice of electronics history, hardware not software. The narrative is classical with Freeman (The Office) plays Chris Curry who would leave Sinclair and set up the rival Acorn Computing. Freeman’s character is that of the prodigal son, he is Roy Keane to Sinclair’s Brian Clough persona. sinclair computing is portrayed as a somewhat amaeteur operation with Sinclair at the helm seemingly more intent on research, the next big idea while business is very much secondary. Step forward our Austrian friend, Hermann Hauser who lures Freemans character away from Sinclair with the idea of setting up Acorn. A much slicker operation that goes head to head with Sinclair. Whilst they are in competition, cut throat is not a word that springs to mind.
Clive Sinclair is easily the most interesting character in Micromen and perhaps deserved bio pic all of his own. Depicted in Micromen as a boffin with a quick temper, firing out orders in manner befitting Alan Sugar. Indeed Sugar gets a nod towards the end of Micromen. What I think Micromen gets across that it is all about the invention not the business. Yes we plenty of scenes were sales speak and imagery take centre stage. One in particular see’s Freemans character Chris Curry surveying the business failure that is warehouse full of stock going unsold. Scenes which work well are those that see both Acorn and Sinclair in those scenes of pressurised invention. Overcoming the odds to deliver a new computer. The soldering iron, a curry delivered and a feeling of the amateur not the professional. What Acorn and Sinclair shared was a Utopian ideal for personal computing, a computer in every British household for education and business. A kind of early version a laptop for every child. Sinclair though is not portrayed as a socially concerned liberal. Indeed his brush with government partnership to bring his computing ideas to the market appear to have scalded him and he keenly awaited the election of Thatcher. Sinclair was determined to make computers affordable for every household even if that meant cutting corners. Like for example a keyboard made of rubber keys. Rivalry between Acorn and Sinclair is brought centre stage in the narrative as the BBC Computer is sought by the corporation to spearheads a new programme on computers whose aim was the spread the educational benefits of computing. Though like the web that emerged in the 1990’s people acquired the computer not so much for learning but for playing games. At this point I can declare an interest, I was the proud owner of a 16k Sinclair Spectrum which with the help of 32K rampak had the colossal computing power of all of 48k. Handy for schoolwork, not so, games were very much on my mind. One game in particular of which in Micromen, Sinclair would shout in despair and anger on the subject of his legacy “Jet Set fucking Willy’ that’s what I will be remembered for. Games software has a bitter taste for both Sinclair and Acorn, the latter surveys the scene of WH Smith and sees only a handful of educational software for their computer. While Sinclair’s Spectrum was selling welling less as games console essentially. Today we still talk about criminalising those copy music to share, I can recall many a day with a high speed twin deck tape recorder copying games for the Sinclair Spectrum. Quick tech point, you loaded games via a tape recorder and the sound if played back in police stations would illicit a confession in no time. Micromen depicts an era in British computing history were Sinclair, Acorn and Cambridge seemed on the cusp of something really big and global in scope. Freeman flaunting his wealth in a Rolls Royce, new offices for Acorn and Sinclair designed very much with an eye to the future. Would Sinclair not IBM come to cease the future, alas no and as ever Sinclair and Acorn represent a quirky, mildly amateur British computing future that would soon be overtaken by IBM and hardware upstarts in the Far East. On reflection had Sinclair succeeded and kick started a Britain is the leading centre for computers for the masses would a better future panned out, a Britain with technology not finance at its core. Even a greener future if only Sinclair’s C5 took off.