David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82
“South African-born pioneer of the British tech industry David Potter, the man behind the iconic Psion pocket computers, passed away on 28th June, six days before his 83rd birthday. Potter was the founder of the company of the same name, a pivotal firm in the British technology industry from the 1980s to the 2000s. Psion supplied software for the early computers from Sinclair Research, the ZX80 and the ZX81, including a Flight Simulator that you can play online. In 1982, Psion supplied the bundled software with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the later, the XChange suite for the Sinclair QL, later available for DOS under the name PC-Four.”
I fondly remember my Psion 5, and actually even the offices I bought it from in Cape Town, right next to the Kenilworth racecourse.
But the linked article is very interesting to read, as I did not realise the connection with Sinclair Research (the ZX81 was my first commercial computer I ever bought). And of course Symbian became famous also with Nokia.
Another thing I never knew, was how the name Psion came about. A spoiler is that P stands for Potter, but as a tech nerd the name was clearly not very glossy PR stuff we think of around Apple products etc today.
But Potter certainly deserves to be called a pioneer of early IT. He innovated in the years when small start-ups all competed with each other, and there were no multi-million Dollar buy-outs or takeovers, and unlimited cash let you dominate the industry.
See
David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82
Physicist, philanthropist, and pioneer of pocket computers, SSDs, smartphones… and duvets
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