Date   : Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:48:40
From   : Pete Turnbull <pete@...>
Subject: Re: Acorn Promo Videos

Helen & John Simpson wrote:

> Does anyone know who these videos were originally aimed at though? They
> don't seem to contain enough sales information to be useful to dealers
> and they are surely too long and waffly to be something Acorn would give
> to private customers. Maybe they were intended for the heads of IT
> purchasing at Local Education Authorities?

The Learning Curve video was intended for use by dealers as a promo, and
some dealers just left it running as demo.  It was made at the time
Acorn did deals with Dixons and John Lewis.  The Micro News video was
given to LEAs and teachers to show how the Archimedes could be used for
a variety of curriculum-related tasks.  The interview with Roger and
Fred was given to dealers and LEAs as background information, and is a
bit older, in fact it was made just after the Archimedes launch in 1987.

By the way, the scrolling credits were done using an Archimedes running
a little program that Roger wrote.  I used to have a copy, but it's
disappeared somewhere.  I also don't have -- because in all the time I
was at Acorn, I never saw -- the test disk that Fred says was given to
all service centres.  If anyone has one, I'd like to get a copy.

There's an even older introductory video about the development of the
ARM and Arc, too (which I have).  It's about ten minutes long, and I
think it's the one we showed at the launch at BAFTA in July 1987, and
subsequently used for some presentations to dealers and LEAs.

ob_trivia:  the spinning and then bouncing BBC-style globe that's shown
in between the Micro News and the Technical Introduction was made on an
Archimedes as a spoof of the rotating globe that the BBC used between
programs at that time.  It ran from floppy (3 or 4 disks as I recall)
and a few of us used that as a demo for a short while, until it was
shown to an audience that included some senior BBC personnel.
Unfortunately they objected to it, and it had to be withdrawn.

I don't remember the Home Computer Minefield, it's obviously a much
later production.

--
Pete                     Peter Turnbull
                        (ex Northern Regional Manager, Acorn Computers)