Hacker Cinema
Micro Men
2009 · Film · 84 min
Directed by Saul Metzstein
In 1979 Clive Sinclair, British inventor of the pocket calculator, frustrated by the lack of home investment in his project,the electric car, also opposes former assistant Chris Curry's belief that he can successfully market a micro-chip for a home computer. A parting of the ways sees Curry, in partnership with the Austrian Hermann Hauser and using whizz kid Cambridge students, set up his own, rival firm to Sinclair Radionics, Acorn. Acorn beat Sinclair to a lucrative contract supplying the BBC with machines for a computer series. From here on it is a battle for supremacy to gain the upper hand in the domestic market.
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36 comments on Hacker News
Vila 'There isn't a lock I can't open if I'm scared enough' Restal was one of the finest sci-fi characters on British telly. The caustic exchanges between him and Avon were priceless.
> Michael was asked whether Vila could cope living in a society stripped of all technology [..] His answer was entirely in character: "I'm sure he would survive. As long as he could make fire, keep warm and meet a young lady. He'd learn a lot about the trees on the planet, build a little hut. It would be wonderful."
I'm not sure that is entirely in character. There's a marvellous episode 'The City at the Edge of the World' where Vila is the main focus of the story. He is given more or less the very opportunity described above and he turned it down:
KERRIL Are you coming with me? VILA I can't. KERRIL Why not? It's a chance to be free. You saw that place, it's beautiful. VILA But there's nothing there worth stealing [..] a thief isn't what I am, it's WHO I am.
https://www.hermit.org/b7/Episodes/scripts/City-EOTW.html
Michael Keating also did a cameo in 'Micro Men' which can be watched on YouTube.
Rest in peace.
Fixing the 16K RAM pack makes an apperance in the Micro Men film:
https://youtu.be/XXBxV6-zamM?t=1694
RAM was so tight on those 8-bit machines that many games used tricks like hiding things inside the viewable area of the screen to eck out just a little bit more.
I love the Acorn story and British computing in general. BBC made a good movie on the subject called Micro Men. Definitely worth a watch despite some inaccuracies. Note that Sophie Wilson was previously known as Roger Wilson and has a cameo at the end of the film.
Micro Men. British film about the beginnings of Spectrum and Acorn.
Notably, no mention of Sophie Wilson, who played a pivotal role in designing the original ARM ISA.
Remarkably, the movie Micro Men also overlooked much of Sophie Wilson’s role, despite her work on ARM becoming one of the most significant technological advances in computing history, accept for a token cameo role as the pub landlady.
Someone will be along in a minute to tell you to watch Micro Men, an amusing and fairly accurate BBC dramatization of the Sinclair/Acorn rivalry :) but I'm here to recommend that you watch the Computer History Museum's interview with Hermann Hauser the erstwhile director of Acorn - he's very charming: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0sC3lT313Q
I'm fairly sure they've got one with Chris Curry too, but I can't spot it just now.
Micro Men (2009) is also a fun movie: it's a dramatised version of the Sinclair vs Acorn story.
Must watch film: Micro men
It's about Sinclair and Acorn.
There is also a video of the Acorn founders reacting to Micro Men.
I found these 2:
Micro Men - 10th Anniversary - With Chris Curry, Steve Furber and Hermann Hauser https://youtu.be/yaonVYOTSsk
Micro Men - 10th Anniversary - The Chat After the Film https://youtu.be/l4I2ktcWdJM
The Centre for Computing History (which provided props and extras for the film) recorded Chris Curry, Steve Furber and Hermann Hauser watching Micro Men for the 10Y anniversary: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/55409/Micro-Men-10th-Anniversary/
I don't have links to hand, but there are some really good long interviews with Chris Curry (of Sinclair and then Acorn) and the immensely charming Hermann Hauser (of Acorn) via one of the computer museums recounting much the same history. They should be kicking around on YouTube. Well worth watching if you enjoy Micro Men.
Not a documentary but Micro Men, it was a one-off BBC drama about that era.
And if you're interested in that watch the movie :-)
https://youtu.be/XXBxV6-zamM
Micro men, story of the zx spectrum vs the bbc
Micro Men! Great little TV movie, and really interesting story of the rivalry between UK golden-age home computing giants Sinclair and Acorn (Acorn being the company behind the BBC micro, and also originally the "A" in "ARM").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_about_computers
Favorites about real and fictional creators:
Micro Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
Pirates of Silicon Valley
Halt and Catch Fire
... and some documentaries like "Mother of all Demos", the history of Internet Explorer vs. Netscape, and the creators of the spreadsheet
It's not a documentary but the BBC drama 'Micro Men' is very good and AFAIK mostly historically accurate.
It's about the battle between Clive Sinclair (of Sinclair Spectrum fame) and Chris Curry (founder of Acorn Computers, the progenitor of ARM) for dominance in the 80's UK home computer market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92
If you guys liked Halt and Catch Fire, I'd also like to recommend:
- Pirates of Silicon Valley (this largely follows Gates and Jobs): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
- Micro Men (this is about the British tech scene in the 80s): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1459467/
Definitively recommend watching micro men if you want a dramatized version of the acorn and Sinclair history
Acorn was not obscure. It was a household name, with TV ads and such.
There's this nice TV show about Sinclair and Acorn from BBC 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM (Micro Men)
There's a sequence in the BBC drama "Micro Men" which appears to dramatise this, albeit with an external clock wire as the culprit. Worth watching, it's brilliant.
Similar memories for me too. Born in '69 and also felt part of a unique period in tech and the UK.
In case you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend watching the BBC film Micro Men (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92). Enjoy.
> I was born ‘89 and in the midlands of the UK, so I missed these programmes
In the real world, outside of BBC fantasies about its own importance, no kid in the 80s (ie, an inconsequential number) became computer literate a) at school or b) on a BBC Micro or c) due to a boring TV series about a computer they didn't own, couldn't afford and couldn't use, because virtually no teacher had any idea what to do with one.
Sir Clive Sinclair (character assassinated by the BBC in a drama about itself, Micro Men) is virtually single-handedly responsible for the computer literacy of British kids in the (certainly early/mid) 1980s, producing the affordable multi-million selling computers they actually used, typed programs into and established a gigantic British gaming industry with.
For those who're interested in the 1980s "micro wars", BBC's Micro Men TV movie (2009) is a nice dramatized glimpse of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
Though it does paint Clive Sinclair (the Steve Jobs of the UK) in a somewhat unflattering light.
"26 years" is oddly precise, but the sinclair C5 was 1985, 34 years ago, so it's probably just how long he's served or something. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5
BONUS "Micro Men" documentary/drama about Sir Clive Sinclair vs Acorn (from which grew Acorn RISC Machine -> ARM) https://youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM (1h 24m) "A man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?"
I highly recommend watching "Micro Men" which focuses on the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair, who developed the ZX Spectrum, and Chris Curry of Acorn.
The original script was called "Syntax Era" which is still a much funnier name :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
There is massive problem in the culture about value of sleep. The culture implicitly defines mentality where working hard without much sleep is somewhat heroic. Therefore according to the culture (again implicitly) those who sleep a lot are lazy.
Hard working heroes who sacrifice sleep from time to time displayed in popular films. Take for example three films Micro Men [1] and The Martian [2] and The Social Network [3].
In first two films, hard working heroes don't "waste" time on "useless/unproductive" sleep and instead drink lots caffeine.
In corporate culture it's often the same. Since 2006 till 2008 I worked as a technical support engineer and I often had to work at night. Sometimes, I took two hours of sleep (in an office's couch) from 4 AM till 6 AM. After these two hours of sleep I would be energized and work really productive till 9 AM. But the company decided to impose strict ban on sleeping in office and instead put coffee machine. As I expected my performance fell significantly no matter how much coffee I took. So the company put stupid discipline over actual performance.
In 2014, I had insomnia so I couldn't perform well at work (again no matter how much coffee I took). I went to corporate doctor (a doctor assigned by company). She looked at me and said that I don't have bruises under my eyes, so I'm totally fine. More than that she actually didn't take any my complaints seriously and instead assumed that I'm lazy.
Nowadays, I mostly sleep well and I almost don't drink caffeine. Sometimes, my insomnia came back. Since I participate in algorithm contests and I know very well that no matter how hard I try to work hard without enough sleep I do not perform well in algorithm contests.
The mentality that working hard is opposite to good sleep is most irrational, harmful and widespread yet very implicit thing in the culture.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network
In case anyone is interested, there is a really good (imo) film from the BBC about the forming of Acorn and it's struggle against Clive Sinclair called Micro Men.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Micro_Men
Somewhat related: Micro Men [1], a semi-documentary/drama movie about Sinclair's rivalry against Acorn computers in late 70s and early 80s. Sophie Wilson herself plays a quick cameo role towards the very end.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hco_Av2DJ8o
I recommend watching "Micro Men", a drama/documentary depicting the early days of Acorn and the battle with Sinclair for producing the BBC's official microcomputer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men
Have you seen Micro Men? Whimsical sort of film about the early days of Sinclair and Acorn, with some focus given to the race to manufacture the BBC's computer.
Her Wikipedia article says "In the BBC television drama Micro Men a young Roger Wilson is played by Stefan Butler and Wilson herself makes a cameo appearance as a pub landlady.", I wouldn't think she has that much of a problem with it if she appeared in a movie with herself portrayed pre-transition.
For a fantastic and entertaining look at the story, check out "Micro men"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1459467/
You also need access to finance who grock the industry your working in - if you can, watch the documentary Micro Men there's a great scene where Cris Curry and Hermann Hauser are trying to explain to some local clueless bank manger that they want to build a personnel computer (the Acorn Atom)
For HN Readers who care little about an obscure computer from the UK, Micro Men is an incredible movie about the people behind the 80s UK computer revolution and the chip design at the core of pretty much every modern smartphone. It's as much about the egos, the business behind it all and the race for dominance over the burgeoning home computer market as anything else, and has Martin Freeman and Alexander Armstrong in title roles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEV1gefvy_k
Incidentally, Acorn (who ended up getting the BBC project) went on to design their own CPU for their next generation computing lineup, a funny little chip design called the Advanced Risc Machine, or ARM, now the most use CPU design in the world.
A recent BBC film/drama called Micro Men chronicled the rise of Sinclair and Acorn and their intense rivalry. They dramatized the recruitment, design, engineering, marketing and financial operations of the two companies. It was a superb production.
Micro Men from BBC had some startuppy themes when Acorn began, although it was more about the rivalry with Sinclair than the startup experience itself.
In my head I associate all kinds of survival movies like Cast Away, Rescue Dawn etc. being startuppy as well in the sense that the characters are surviving on their wits and persistence, against forces of nature and their own doubts.