Your Computer Interviewed Chris Curry (1981)

Chris talks about his work with Clive Sinclair and Acorn Computers with a little BBC Micro.

from the October 1981 issue of Your Computer magazine

Chris Curry's Cambridge company, Acorn, is beginning to emerge as one of the strongest personal computer firms in Britain. Its main product, the Acorn Atom, has proved both popular and reliable. The company won the coveted contract to design and build the computer to be marketed by the BBC and accompany the BBC's planned computer literacy series. Chris Curry talks to Duncan Scot.

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The ATOM computer is one of the few approved by the Departments of Industry and Education for purchase by other Government departments. Acorn's other products include its networking system, the Econet, which is designed to link Atoms together in a classroom.

Acorn will shortly be releasing the first of the BBC computers and a larger version of the same system which will be known as the Proton. At present, the company is quartered in four offices in Cambridge — new business accommodation is being built on the outskirts of the city. Its turnover is about £3 million per annum and a new financial controller is planning systems which will take the company into the £15 million to £20 million bracket.

All this has happened in the space of 18 months. Perhaps ironically it was Clive Sinclair, creator and manufacturer of the ZX-80 and ZX-81 personal computers, who led Chris Curry into the field of computing. Curry left school with some A levels and a keen enthusiasm for all things electronic — he used to spend much of his spare time trying to build amplifiers from old television valves.

After working in several different jobs, Curry answered an advertisement, placed by Clive Sinclair, for engineers. Curry was given the job just when Sinclair was starting his work on miniature radios.

"Things really took off when Clive returned from the States with the first single-chip calculator. He gave it to me with a wadge of paper and said 'get that working'. It was completely new to me.

"I built a prototype with another chap in the laboratory. We built a breadboard around the chip and built a keyboard from bent wire. After a little fiddling, the thing worked. It really was like magic to see those numbers appearing on the display; and then when you used one of the functions and the result flew across the screen — it was incredible. To see this happening with this little piece of electronics was really exciting".

By 1977, the fortunes of Sinclair Radionics, the main arm of Sinclair's operation, were waning. The company was ensnarled with the National Enterprise Board; there were technical problems with 'the infamous Black Watch and the first of the Microvision television sets were proving extremely expensive. Clive Sinclair decided to relaunch another company he owned, Science of Cambridge, with Chris Curry in charge.

"I had been very interested in the computer market, watching, buying the U.S. magazines and seeing what was happening. I actually tried to negotiate an import agreement with an American company which had, what they called, a computer in a book.

"We nearly went ahead with an inexpensive home computer which would have been based on the use of a calculator chip for keyboard and display. Eventually, we went away from the use of a calculator and used more conventional interfaces to provide a display and keyboard — and produced the Mk-14.

"That became a great favourite very quickly. The first arrived on the market in February 1978, but in fact it wasn't until May that we distributed them in reasonable quantities. I think we sold about 1,500 of them.

"By this time, I was thinking in terms of a better product. I had been trying to persuade Clive that we should do a low-cost personal computer which ran Basic and could be attached to a television set. At the same time, Sinclair Radionics started developing the machine now known as the KewBrain. I could see that Clive was not going to support this kind of product at Science of Cambridge if he was going to do it in Sinclair Radionics".

One of the side-effects of Chris Curry's work on the Mk-14 was that he had many enquires from people wanting to use microprocessors in various industrial applications. That led him into what was effectively a part-time consultancy and brought him into contact with Dr Herman Hauser, who later became a partner in Acorn, and a member of the Cambridge Processor Group, the university computer group. Curry decided to try and keep the team together, outside Science of Cambridge.

"We went ahead with the System 1. It was a kind of equivalent Mk-14, but based on Eurocards so that we could expand and link the system. When the advertising appeared, Clive spotted the trademark".

Chris Curry stayed at Science of Cambridge for a few months while Clive Sinclair found someone else who could run the operation. In the meantime, Acorn had already set up offices in Market Hill in Cambridge and was a thriving little operation with four full-time staff.

"There has always been a fairly amicable relationship between Clivc and me. We always pretended that there was not much competition between us, I think it is certainly growing more intense now that Clivc is obviously aiming hard at the education market.

"The System 1 appeared in January 1978 — exactly a year before the Atom. Acorn did not really take off until the Atom became available. There was a strong attitude in the laboratory at that time that we should maintain our product line as being semi-professional — that we should concentrate on the Eurocard system.

"I had to push hard for the Atom. I did the development separately with one chap. For example, to save money, the case for the Atom was designed not as a computer but as a keyboard for the Systems. We asked the industrial designer to make something which was low-key, not too flashy. He produced the Atom".

The designer of the computer was Roger Wilson of Acorn. He chose the 6502 chip because he believed and wanted to prove that the 6502 could be faster than the Z-80 chip, contrary to popular opinion. Much of the Atom Basic, however, had its origins in Acorn's early days when they were writing process-control applications.

In other words, it was written for speed, not to fall in line with common standards. Chris Curry defends the Basic as being extremely fast and that: "It has only been criticised on the grounds that it is not like Microsoft".

The big breakthrough for Acorn, however, occurred when it was awarded the contract to design and supply the computer for the BBC's forthcoming computer-literacy series, the details of which were published in the June/July issue of _Your Computer_. The fact that the BBC is to use its marketing powers to sell a BBC-branded computer is still a matter of some controversy.

"I think I read a report in a paper somewhere that the BBC was to market its own computer. It gave some brief specification of the computer. I went to see Clive and he had not heard of it. We both did some research and discovered that it was almost certainly the NewBrain". By this time, the NewBrain had been passed from the National Enterprise Board to the company Newbury Laboratories.

"We were all very cross and both of us wrote letters complaining about the choice, at not having heard about it and at not even being given the chance to tender for it. We also questioned whether, in principle, it was reasonable for the BBC to do such a thing.

"I've done a little word-eating since then. After the letter, I had a meeting with John Radcliffe, the producer, and showed him the Atom. He obviously discussed it with his advisors and then said that it would not do the job. We then told him about the Proton". (The Proton was being developed by Acorn at the time as a contender for the office microcomputer market): "They said the Proton would do the job. We had more meetings, a presentation at the laboratories, they examined our production facilities and our record of production ability.

"I think that the main thing which went against Newbury was that it had spent nearly two years developing its computer and it still had not got off the ground. We showed a record of managing to produce things quickly with a reasonably good design.

"The BBC was very worried about upsetting the rest of the industry, but for the purposes of its educational course it could not base it on any computer. The BBC had to have one computer and so it had to be chosen or specifically built. In the end, the Proton is effectively a machine built specifically for the BBC.

"The BBC is being pilloried about it but really it's a kind of philanthropic gesture on its part; all it wants to do is give computer knowledge to the people".

Before the BBC contract arrived Roger Wilson at Acorn was writing a development of the Atom Basic which would have brought it more into line with languages such as Pascal and Comal. In the end, however, the BBC contract forced them to move back towards a Basic compatible with Microsoft.

"We have ended up with a compromise that doesn't actually lose the features of Roger's original ideas. We are confident that the Basic wc are using for the BBC is as good as anyone can make it. It covers all of the Microsoft and all the good points of Roger's original Basic. It meets just about everyone's criteria of what they need out of Basic. It meets Microsoft 5; it does what Comal does; it is a structured Basic; it's fast and it has upward-compatibility from the Atom Basic.

"I see it becoming a world standard. Whereas most of the other languages have retained their identity, Basic has been drifting around according to manufacturers' and designers' whims. I think that this is the first time that everyone will pull together and adopt a standard. The specifications have been distributed to everybody — all the manufacturers and distributors in the U.K. — for comments and so any company can build a similar machine if it wants to.

"The BBC is not going to stop in the U.K. It will be selling the programs in all English-speaking countries. Already non-English speaking countries are showing great interest".

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