It was when I was listening to Dennis Hayes, the man who gave the standard set of modem commands his name, talk about the three hours it used to take to configure a modem the size of a shoebox by moving tiny, little jumpers that it occurred to me that in these interviews we were recording history that would otherwise be lost. The computer industry moves so fast that almost no one has time to write anything down -- just about the only things that get published are instructions for using products, promotional material, or, in the case of egregious successes (Microsoft) or outstanding failures (IBM), business analyses. Simon Rockman, who commissioned most of these interviews, had the same reaction when he read the Hayes piece, and that’s how the notion of a book was conceived. It was Nick Beard (robots), though, who interested Springer Verlag in the idea.

Rereading these interviews has been intriguing. It’s surprising to see that only five years ago even top people (Michael Dell) were uncertain about the eventual success of Microsoft Windows, and to rediscover the world before computing standards that led British manufacturers such as Apricot (Peter Horne) and Acorn (Hermann Hauser) to grossly underestimate the importance of the standard-setting IBM PC. The ebb and flow of this volatile and unevenly maturing industry bears a lesson for every arrogant company which thinks success today means success tomorrow. Or even country: charted in these pieces is the early lead Britain had and lost in computing, which survives only in a few pockets here and there. History does not have to be only written by the winners.

As this book goes to press, yet another major computer company struggles to hold onto yesterday’s market share: Novell. The Utah-based networking leader swallowed WordPerfect (a DOS winner but Windows loser) at a gulp in 1994, and also acquired a spreadsheet (Quattro Pro) and database (Paradox) from Borland, itself falling from black balance sheets at the time. Less than a year and a half later, with Microsoft claiming 90 percent of the office suites market, Novell put those applications up for sale to concentrate on retaining its dominance in networking, where it’s facing ever-increasing competition. Meanwhile, a host of companies, new and old, are panning for gold on the Internet, where the next wave of boom or bust is starting.

The personal fortunes of the interviewees have fluctuated, too: the personality it takes to start up a company and take it through its season of fastest growth is not always the same personality it takes to manage a large company. Some have managed the transition: Michael Dell, Mark Eppley, Gordon Eubanks. Others have moved on, amicably: Mike Markkula, Philippe Kahn. A few have faced dismissal: Jack Schoof. But they’ll all be back. If there’s one truism about the computer industry it’s that people don’t leave; they just move on to other jobs.

PCW has been around as long as microcomputers; it is the oldest and best-established computer title in Britain. Founded in 1978, before there were PCs or today’s glut of computer magazines, it runs neck and neck with Computer Shopper for the top-selling spot. But what’s special about it is not that it has more editorial pages than any other British magazine (a dubious distinction) but that in this ocean of product reviews and jargon it tries to cover the underlying technology in a broader sense. The series of interviews from which these have been selected is part of that. Originally conceived by Guy Swarbrick and Simon Rockman, the series has gone from one industry name to another since John Diamond’s opening tea party with Emma Nicholson, MP.

PCW was one of the first publications that ever paid me to write anything, and it’s been a mainstay ever since; thanks to its staff for that, and for commissioning these interviews and assisting with providing the raw materials for the book. The magazine would, however, never have heard of me if it hadn’t been for Nick Beard (again), who in the summer of 1990 planted my name on several editors’ desks at VNU, or for Carol Hemsley, who made sure they remembered it afterwards. Thanks are also owed to my friends Mike Cogan and Maren Cooke, who provided the chauffeuring and accommodation that made several of these interviews possible. To the various unnamable folks I claim as family for their encouragement and support: you know who you are.

Wendy M. Grossman, November, 1995

PCW is the best place in the world to work if you like computer hardware. You get the latest, most exotic equipment to play with, often months before it hits the shops, and the manufacturers even pretend not to mind if you break it.

Sometimes, to break the monotony of playing with yet another fastest-ever PC or high-resolution colour printer, the computer companies will buy you lunch in the kinds of restaurants where you are disappointed if at least one of the other diners hasn’t won a Oscar. Eventually you get blasé and start turning down boat trips on a fjord and odd days on the West Coast (Monterey not Morecambe).

But these are all things you can have with enough money. Getting to meet the major personalities in the computer industry is harder. And I’ve done it. I’ve met many impressive people and always enjoyed interviewing them.

It wasn’t long after I joined PCW in 1990 that I met Sir Clive Sinclair, my first interview. What the interview here doesn’t record is that he showed me a prototype PC, something very similar to a Hewlett-Packard Omnibook, a PC successor to the Z88. Unfortunately he became too interested in electric bicycles for the computer to appear.

My second hero was bagged a lot later. Chuck Peddle was the inventor of the 6502, the Commodore PET and the Sirius 1. He was in London to promote his new company, but I was more interested in the past and the distant future. He promised a machine, codenamed “The Chunk” which could reconfigure itself to emulate a number of different platforms. Both this computer and Sinclair’s prototype are futures which never happened. Mostly, though, these interviews are about the past: how the greats of the computer industry have earned their success, power and influence.

We’ve always been hard-nosed about PCW interviews. We’ve never submitted questions in advance or allowed anyone outside the PCW office to "check the facts" by reading the copy before it goes to press (and we have refused interviews where this was a prerequisite). The first people outside the PCW office to see an interview are usually PCW subscribers.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at interviewing people. I enjoyed meeting them and asking interesting questions, but when it came to turning their thoughts into the high-quality prose that is the stock in trade of PCW I failed to measure up. You won’t have noticed this because anything which wasn’t up to scratch has been rewritten and turned into sparkling copy by Lauraine Lee and her wordsmiths on the PCW production desk. Lauraine has been with PCW since the days when 16K RAM packs wobbled and a monitor was something you used for entering hexadecimal.

The pictures have also helped to make the PCW interviews special. Most of them have been shot by Jon Millar, a man who isn’t scared of getting some of the richest men in the world to sit on the carpet or hang in unusual positions from staircases. His banter has livened up the interviewing almost as much as his shots have livened the pages.

The greatest influence on the interviews, though, is Wendy Grossman who, being much better than I was at interviewing, writing the interviews up and getting them in on time, has been responsible for most of the interviews in this book and it is Wendy who has compiled and edited the interviews you see here. She has been incredibly patient waiting by her letterbox for the book contract long after I’d given up hope and the result is a good overview of the people who made the UK microcomputer industry over the last decade with some pointers to the future.

We’ve not yet interviewed everyone I want, I’d still like to meet Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and as close to the inventor of the video game as we are ever likely to get. And I’ve always wanted a PCW interview with Alan Sugar...but I suspect he’d rather meet Kevin Keegan.

David Brake (Robert McConnell) joined PCW in 1991 as a staff writer, and served first as news editor and finally as editor of the net-oriented Cutting Edge section; he left in 1995 to become Net Editor at New Scientist.

Ian Burley (Andy Hopper) has been a freelance technology writer for 11 years, specialising in computing and communications topics.

George Cole (Carol Bartz) is a freelance technology writer and a regular contributor to the Times and the Financial Times.

John Diamond (Emma Nicholson) is a freelance writer; he is a columnist for the Times and presenter of Radio 5’s Stop Press.

Sara Gordon (The Dark Avenger) is a security analyst whose work in anti-virus research has been profiled in publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal Europe.

Wendy M. Grossman is a freelance writer based in London; she writes often for the Telegraph, among many others, and is chief sysop of CompuServe's Fleet Street Forum for UK media.

Lauraine Lee is production editor of PCW; the headlines (now chapter titles) and original editing are largely her work.

Simon Rockman (Clive Sinclair, Chuck Peddle, Mark Eppley, Chuck Geschke) was first features editor and then deputy editor at PCW from 1990 to 1995; he is also publisher of What Mobile?, which he founded in 1993.

Guy Swarbrick (Al Shugart) was editor of PCW from 1990 to 1992, when he moved on to Dell UK and then to Microsoft, where he is business development manager for mobile computing.

Ben Tisdall (Jack Schoof) is editor of PCW and former editor of Personal Computer Magazine and What Micro?

Geof Wheelwright (Bill Gates, Andy Grove, David Cutler, Gordon Eubanks) is a freelance writer and author based in Vancouver; he is a regular contributor to the Sunday Times and the Financial Times; he served briefly as editor of PCW in 1990.

Benjamin Woolley (Michael Dell, David Potter, Mike Newton) is author of Virtual Worlds and presenter of The Net, BBC Television’s series on computing and the digital age.