IMHO the Bob Noyce telebio last night was as brilliant as the other programmes in the series in the series were terrible. In fact most lasted only a few minutes before I switched off and I missed the second (or more if there were more) part of the drama about Sinclair and Acorn. In Ken Tennet's blog he talks about "Acorn's descent into financial difficulty as the bank happily gives the company bigger loans for expansion, and it carries out an ill-advised stock exchange flotation." Acorn was not a client and I didn't do the float but I did organise and host a conference ('84 or 85?), on the paperless office (ha ha), at the NCC in Manchester to which I invited Acorn. I don't remember now but Acorn were represented either by Chris Curry or Herman Hauser. It was required by Stock Exchange rules then, and is legally obligatory now, not to make any statement that provides new information to the market without a formal statement to the Stock Exchange. The Acorn presentation included the jaw dropping news that sales were down some massive number and that the company would miss expectations by miles. By the end of the immediately following coffee break the share price had collapsed and they hurriedly departed. I'm sorry now I didn't persist with the drama but perhaps I'll catch up on the iplayer. kind regards neil Dr Roger Neil Barton http://www.uclmail.net/~neil.barton/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bernardo Batiz-Lazo" <bbatiz64@googlemail.com> To: <comban@sigcis.org> Cc: <members@sigcis.org> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 12:34 PM Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Two good recent TV programmes on the history ofcomputing that are worth viewing.
A heads up to Ken Tennet's Blog (he is part of the Business History Unit at the London School of Economics):
http://kdtennent.blogspot.com/2009/10/recent-business-history-on-bbc.html
He comments on two recent tv programs on the history of computing. Not sure if everyone will be able to download and play.But at least you can get an idea from Ken and if really keen, then ask for a copy for your uni's library.
You can keep up with Ken via Facebook.
Best, Bernardo University of Leicester _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members