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Authors: Rebecca Levene
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mattered. The ZX Spectrum was for sale in every WH Smith across the land and at a price that made sense. Moreover, it would soon develop its biggest
selling point: the largest selection of games for any machine in the world, bar none.
Meanwhile, as the BBC Micro became the home of educational software in Britain, inevitably some found that the medium came to reflect its message: safe programs that
taught with the careful pace of a diligent school master and in the earnest primary colours of children’s books. The ZX Spectrum had a racier, even grungier, image – it was the
people’s computer, where an educational package was a subterfuge for bringing a games machine into the home. It would shamelessly entertain, while the BBC Micro, with its backing from the
national broadcaster and a natural place in schools and the homes of teachers, never shook off an aura of worthiness.
The market became divided between the cost-conscious gamers, and those who wanted a computer to teach, or to learn, or who took comfort in the respectable endorsement of the BBC. Other machines
grabbed tens of per cent of market share, but for half a decade nothing knocked these two off the pole position of their respective markets, even while they were jostling with each other. Or, as on
one infamous occasion, when they came to blows.
In the run up to Christmas 1984, Acorn ran a provocative advert that pointed out the high failure rate of the ZX Spectrum, and Clive Sinclair was infuriated. According to Michael Jeacock, a
newspaper columnist who happened to be in the Baron of Beef pub in Cambridge at the time, the entrepreneur launched himself at Curry, allegedly shouting, ‘You fucking buggering
shit-bucket!’ But in Curry’s version, told to technology journalist Ellie Seymour, the only real fight happened later, in the wine bar Shades across the road. ‘He came up behind
me and put his hands round my face, his hand went in my eye and it made me see red. I spun round and swung him a light blow.’
The fight formed the denouement of
Micro Men
, a 2009 BBC drama about Sinclair’s rivalry with Acorn. Curry was a consultant on the script, although he chose not to watch it.
‘Poor Clive was made to look like a lunatic,’ he says. ‘Which he isn’t.’ The altercation didn’t appear to damage the pair’s friendship though – weeks
later Curry was a guest at Sinclair’s New Year’s party.
Clive Sinclair was knighted for his ubiquitous computers. Theyowed their success to the games market, but like a rock star known for a single hit, Sinclair comes across
as tired of being associated with this legacy. He rarely discusses the Spectrum now, and it seems that he never really forgave the BBC, or believed that its decision was fair. ‘The BBC had
made up their minds before they spoke to us,’ he said in 1989. ‘I think that was one of the most outrageous steps in the whole home computer business. The BBC shouldn’t have given
a contract to anybody, but if they did do it, it should have been an open bid, and it wasn’t. We said we could have made the machine that they wanted for half the price that Acorn did, and
they just didn’t want to know. They were making a cut and that was that.’
Perhaps if Sinclair had won the BBC contract, or even if he had never split with Curry at all, Britain would have emerged from the eighties with a single, strong computer brand with real
survival power. But the masters the two men served were so different – the value conscious mass market and teaching programming in schools – that a rapprochement would have involved too
great a sacrifice. As it is, the BBC intervened just at the point when the technology was coalescing around a viable consumer product, one resistant to obsolescence. In the process, the
Corporation, Sinclair and Acorn established the landscape for UK computing for nearly a decade, and trained a generation of the most influential games creators in the world.
3
We
selling point: the largest selection of games for any machine in the world, bar none.
Meanwhile, as the BBC Micro became the home of educational software in Britain, inevitably some found that the medium came to reflect its message: safe programs that
taught with the careful pace of a diligent school master and in the earnest primary colours of children’s books. The ZX Spectrum had a racier, even grungier, image – it was the
people’s computer, where an educational package was a subterfuge for bringing a games machine into the home. It would shamelessly entertain, while the BBC Micro, with its backing from the
national broadcaster and a natural place in schools and the homes of teachers, never shook off an aura of worthiness.
The market became divided between the cost-conscious gamers, and those who wanted a computer to teach, or to learn, or who took comfort in the respectable endorsement of the BBC. Other machines
grabbed tens of per cent of market share, but for half a decade nothing knocked these two off the pole position of their respective markets, even while they were jostling with each other. Or, as on
one infamous occasion, when they came to blows.
In the run up to Christmas 1984, Acorn ran a provocative advert that pointed out the high failure rate of the ZX Spectrum, and Clive Sinclair was infuriated. According to Michael Jeacock, a
newspaper columnist who happened to be in the Baron of Beef pub in Cambridge at the time, the entrepreneur launched himself at Curry, allegedly shouting, ‘You fucking buggering
shit-bucket!’ But in Curry’s version, told to technology journalist Ellie Seymour, the only real fight happened later, in the wine bar Shades across the road. ‘He came up behind
me and put his hands round my face, his hand went in my eye and it made me see red. I spun round and swung him a light blow.’
The fight formed the denouement of
Micro Men
, a 2009 BBC drama about Sinclair’s rivalry with Acorn. Curry was a consultant on the script, although he chose not to watch it.
‘Poor Clive was made to look like a lunatic,’ he says. ‘Which he isn’t.’ The altercation didn’t appear to damage the pair’s friendship though – weeks
later Curry was a guest at Sinclair’s New Year’s party.
Clive Sinclair was knighted for his ubiquitous computers. Theyowed their success to the games market, but like a rock star known for a single hit, Sinclair comes across
as tired of being associated with this legacy. He rarely discusses the Spectrum now, and it seems that he never really forgave the BBC, or believed that its decision was fair. ‘The BBC had
made up their minds before they spoke to us,’ he said in 1989. ‘I think that was one of the most outrageous steps in the whole home computer business. The BBC shouldn’t have given
a contract to anybody, but if they did do it, it should have been an open bid, and it wasn’t. We said we could have made the machine that they wanted for half the price that Acorn did, and
they just didn’t want to know. They were making a cut and that was that.’
Perhaps if Sinclair had won the BBC contract, or even if he had never split with Curry at all, Britain would have emerged from the eighties with a single, strong computer brand with real
survival power. But the masters the two men served were so different – the value conscious mass market and teaching programming in schools – that a rapprochement would have involved too
great a sacrifice. As it is, the BBC intervened just at the point when the technology was coalescing around a viable consumer product, one resistant to obsolescence. In the process, the
Corporation, Sinclair and Acorn established the landscape for UK computing for nearly a decade, and trained a generation of the most influential games creators in the world.
3
We
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